


WIP Amnesty: some things i am not finishing

by leah k (blinkiesays)



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 14:02:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2735264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blinkiesays/pseuds/leah%20k
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things otherwise cluttering up my hard drive that I've written a lot of, but for some reason or another stopped working on.  Rough, riddled with grammatical errors and, as a rule, incomplete.</p><p>Fandoms and pairings in the chapter titles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stargate Atlantis: McKay/Dex -- The Invisibles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Canon-based-AU featuring the main SGA cast as a ragtag group of guerrilla fighters against an Earth-based Wraith threat.
> 
> (Oddly enough, my favorite part of this was the antagonistic!bro McKay/Sheppard totally-just-friends-relationship. O_o)

Officially, this is what they know about Ronon Dex: born in Sri Lanka, 1980, to parents Janice Whittaker, American citizen, and Taraki Dex, Tamil Tiger. Janice dies, 1993, of untreated Malaria; Taraki dies, 1996, during government campaign to retake city of Kilinochchic. Ronon arrives in California, 1997, awarded B.S. in Physics and Electrical Engineering from UC-Berkley, 2000, M.S. in Chemistry from Caltech, 2004. Published works in journals _Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis, Analytical Chemistry, Chemical Society Reviews, and Nature._

 _Unofficially_ , this is what they know about Ronon Dex: there's a guy in Pasadena that people say can make explosives out of thin air.

\--

Sheppard hears of Dex from someone who knows someone who knows someone, and Rodney hears about him when Sheppard drops a manila envelope in his lap and says, "I need you to go get somebody."

Rodney sees the words _Analytic Chemistry_ sticking out of the top of the folder and says, "Oh no, not again," before looking up at Sheppard, who is -- grinning.

"No, see," Sheppard says, and Rodney can't get over the sight of him _smiling_ , he almost doesn't even hear him say, "You're gonna like this one. There's a picture."

Rodney usually argues with Sheppard on principle, but he pages through through Dex's file anyway and is surprised to feel himself smiling back. It's just so incredibly rare that somebody fits all of their criteria: smart, dangerous, and _batshit crazy_.

"Fine," Rodney says, and Sheppard smiles at him again -- that crazy, dangerous smile -- and says, "Awesome."

Rodney's on a plane within the hour.

\--

Besides the constant threat of a horrible, painful, messy death, what Rodney hates the most about the job is recruiting. Logically, Rodney understands that they need new talent, and that they're not really putting out ads in the _Thrifty Nickel_. Rodney even understands why it has to be him, that he's the only one left that looks even remotely respectable in public anymore - he has all his original body parts, walks without a limp, and has no scars where anybody can see. They tried sending Zelenka out once, to pick up a new geologist, but the guy'd freaked out and ran for the door the moment Zelenka had rolled up his sleeves.

Still, being the most respectable-looking member of his peer group is sort of like being the smartest Spice Girl - it isn’t actually saying much. Rodney still looks to the outside eye like he's shuffled out of a half-way house: second-hand clothes, bags under his eyes, and about four days growth of beard. He draws wary looks as he passes through airport security, open looks of suspicion when he hands over a passport for a Mr. Roger Ingram, travelling from Colorado to Pasadena on a bereavement fare.

When he is inevitably pulled out of line and searched, Rodney stutters out, "My aunt Beverly, it was so sudden," and tries to look convincingly distraught, sweating profusely and cursing Sheppard's inability to fabricate a decent cover story. They eventually wave him through with reluctance, thankfully forgoing the strip search, and he sprints through the terminal clutching his boots just to make the last call on his flight.

The thing they don't tell you about living under a mountain is that it puts you of sync with the rest of the world, and Rodney's forgotten how to deal with what used to be everyday things, like airports. The hurry-up-and-wait aspects of flying, which used to just be annoying, now make him nervous and edgy and uncomfortable. Uncomfortable enough, actually, that one of the stewardesses gives him a reassuring smile and slips him a tiny plastic twist-top bottle of vodka with his cranberry juice.

Rodney swallows a couple Dramamine dry, downs the vodka in one go, and wakes up in California.

\--

Flying into John Wayne is obviously Sheppard's idea of a joke, but Rodney figures having to deal with a car rental agency is punishment for something he's done wrong in a past life.

Sheppard last words to him before he'd left the mountain were, "We need a new Jeep." Rodney'd selected the largest, ugliest SUV on the website when he was making the reservation, but the girl behind the counter's opening offer is a Plymouth Caravan. Which means that Rodney has to _negotiate_. Oh _god_.

Ten minutes of arguing and smiling and using phrases like _real southern California experience_ later, he's holding the keys to a god damn _Hummer_ , and Sheppard can _bite_ him.

He tries to practice his sales pitch on the drive from Santa Ana to Pasadena, but as he's dodging between convertibles and weaving around semi-trucks his carefully scripted speech quickly degrades into growling and cursing at everyone else on the road.

He pulls off at a gas station before he reaches the campus, shaves in the bathroom with a disposable razor and splashes water on his face, watching himself in the mirror and trying to remember what he'd looked like, four years and fifty pounds ago. The last time he'd been in Pasadena, he'd been giving a lecture on theoretical wormhole physics.

The students had lost him about twenty minutes in, the slowest staring absently at the pictures in his slides, the more dedicated taking down pages and pages of notes and falling further and further behind with every word. As the talk wore on and on, his heart started beating faster, his palms started sweating, his breath came in shorter and shorter pants. He kept talking, but the whole time it felt like he was reaching out for something that kept getting farther away. The moment he reached the last slide, the one that said, "Questions?" and the room fell deathly silent, he realized for the first time in his life that he was in the wrong place.

He'd lingered on for a few minutes after the talk had ended, shaking hands with the chair of the department, fielding frantic questions from wide-eyed undergraduates, but he'd felt panicked and trapped the whole time. It was like someone had pulled the ground out from beneath his feet, his life no longer felt like it belonged to him.

He'd made some excuse to someone about needing to make a phone call, and stumbled out into the hallway, hyperventilating. His whole field of vision had narrowed down to about four square inches, black spots crowding in along the edges, when a a strange man with dark hair and a darker look in his eyes had grabbed his arm and said, "Do you have a minute?"

At the time, he would have said yes to almost anything.

\--

Once Rodney gets to the Caltech campus, Dex is an easy man to find. The description: _6'6", dreadlocks, scary eyes_ , doesn't fit very many people in the chemistry department, even in California.

He asks the first starry-eyed girl he finds and gets a sort of wistful, "Oh, you mean Ronon?" She gives him a brief look, sizing him up as competition, and he feels indignant when she makes a sort of dismissive gesture towards him and says, "his office is in Beckman."

Dex doesn't have the kind of office typically reserved for graduate students, who are usually herded into concrete boxes in basements or converted storage rooms. Rodney's own graduate career had been spent in an office smaller than his car, crammed in with three other grads who only spoke English under great duress. They'd had a leg up on the other grads in the department, though, in that they'd had a window, tinged yellow with old dirt, and a lovely view of the backs of ugly buildings. Dex's office is on the top floor of his building, with wide, clean windows overlooking a flowered courtyard and a reflecting pool.

Dex looks up from his computer before Rodney even has a chance to knock on his half-opened door. "You're not one of my students," he says.

Rodney gives two seconds of thought to his cover story, that he's a recruiter for some pharmaceutical company, looking at this year's Ph.D.s, but he can't go through with it. Instead, he says to Dex what what Sheppard said to him, four years and a lifetime ago, "Do you have a minute?"

Dex raises one eyebrow and looks briefly at his computer screen before turning his chair towards Rodney and saying, "I've got all the time in the world."

Rodney steps into Dex's office, closing the door behind him.

\--

The last time Rodney was in Pasadena, John Sheppard had said to him, "What if I told your work wasn't nearly as theoretical as you thought it was?"

Rodney had shaken his head and thought, _great, another crackpot_ , until Sheppard had pulled something out of his pocket, a small green device that looked remarkably like his Great Aunt Eleanor's emerald brooch. Sheppard had smirked at him, the device had lit up without him visibly doing anything, and then he'd sort of shimmered all over the same green color of the device and said, "Hit me."

Rodney had thought, _great, a crackpot with dreams of being beaten up by an astrophysicist_ , but he'd said, "What?"

Sheppard had said, "Hit me," again.

Rodney had been having a bad day, and Sheppard had looked so goddamn _smug_ , Rodney didn't hesitate twice, and pulled back and socked Sheppard in the jaw. Or, well, Rodney had tried to sock Sheppard in the jaw, but his fist hadn't connected, and had in fact bounced off of Sheppard's glowing green shell.

Rodney had said, "What?" And, " _Ow_." And, "How did you?" And, "Why did?" And finally he'd asked the most important question, the one Sheppard was willing to answer, "Who the hell _are_ you?"

Sheppard had said, "I'm a guy offering you a job."

\--

Dex takes things pretty well, all told. Most people panic at the revelation that they aren't alone in the universe. Dex just stares at the personal shield Rodney holds in his outstretched hand and says, "Huh."

Rodney says, "Alien technology, all the secrets of the universe, and all you say is, ' _huh?'_ "

Dex looks up at him and says, "Cool."

\--

It was just strange luck that he hadn't gone through to Atlantis, him and Sheppard both. They'd both been on this list - John for his ATA gene, Rodney for his absolute brilliance and cool head in difficult situations. They'd both been packed and ready and cooling their heels in Antarctica, ferrying supplies and equipment back from the outpost to McMurdo so everything could get shipped to Colorado in time to go through with the first wave.

They'd been flying the same route they'd done a dozen times before, pretending like they hadn't run out of things to talk about, when their helicopter had hit an ugly tailwind and gone lurching out of Sheppard's control. Rodney had been too scared to be angry, too sure he was going to die to even yell at Sheppard for getting them killed, and he'd just grabbed for something to hold on to as they went down sideways into a wall of ice. Sheppard's arm had had a bruise the shape of Rodney's hand for three weeks.

Rodney had still been in surgery when the expedition was cleared for the mission, been drinking Jell-o through a straw when they went through the wormhole. He'd been angry and resentful and spent hours playing chess with Sheppard and sulking, imagining how fantastic everything in the Pegasus galaxy was. He'd been desperate to go, tried everything he could think to find a way to get there, until they learned what happened to that expedition, until people started to disappear.

\--

Dex doesn't bother going home for his things. Rodney appreciates that. Most people don't know what to take with them, and end up trying to pack their whole lives into whatever shitty rental car Rodney picks them up in. When Rodney had picked up Simpson, he'd spent three hours talking her out of bringing her grandmother's sewing machine. Dex, though, just grabs an old rucksack from the corner of his office and says, "Lead the way." 

Pasadena to Colorado Springs is a fifteen hour drive, with long stretches winding through the desert and fifteen hours is a long time to spend in a car with a man you barely know. Dex isn't very good company for the first hundred miles, just sits staring out the window, his huge frame wedged against the passenger side door, his long legs braced against the dashboard.

When they hit Barstow, Rodney pulls off to disable the LoJack on the Hummer. Dex spends the half-hour it takes making phone calls to various friends and colleagues, trying to wrap up loose ends without letting on that anything's wrong.

Usually, Rodney has to talk people through this part of the process, has to stop them from calling their loved ones one last time. It's better for everyone involved, if it looks like you just disappeared. So many people disappear every day now, it doesn't arise suspicion anymore. Suddenly closing out your bank account and giving away your things, _that_ looks suspicious.

Dex is something else, though. He doesn't sound panicked or scared or anything. He says, _I'll get back to you on that next week_ , like there's going to be a next week, and, _Talk to you later_ , instead of, _Goodbye._

Rodney doesn’t ask, but if Dex can't read what Rodney's thinking off his face, he's not the same person Rodney read about in that file. Dex shrugs and says, "It was something my father taught me." Rodney expects him to say more, but that seems to be it for now.

Rodney understands, though he wouldn't have four years ago. Dex hands over his cell phone, doesn't flinch when Rodney pulls out the SIM card and snaps it in half, doesn't blink when Rodney throws everything under the treads of the Hummer. The sun's setting over the desert, all the heat bleeding out into the night, Rodney's getting cold just standing still. There's a safe house in Las Vegas, another manifestation of Sheppard's demented sense of humor; if they get back on the road now, they'll be there by 10:30.

Rodney says, "Come on."

Dex takes one last look out west, towards California and what Rodney imagines was a pretty nice life. He says, "My father always said, 'Every time you say goodbye is the last time you say goodbye.'"

Dex says, "They know how I feel," and gets back into the car.

\--

If Rodney had been paying attention to the news in January 2004, he would have probably believed that there was an earthquake in Alaska that ruptured an oil pipeline. That was the official story, the one Elizabeth had come up with and that they'd fed to the news.

It's not even _that_ much of a lie. There _was_ an earthquake, the pipeline _did_ rupture - because of the god-damn spaceship that landed in the middle of Denali National Park.

\--

The safe house is a one-bedroom apartment in Spring Valley with a warped linoleum floor that always smells like wet dog. Sleeping on the couch always hurts Rodney's back, and when he tells Dex this, Dex says, "We'll share the bed," like it isn't a big deal.

Katie Brown had shyly suggested the same thing. Rodney had slept on the couch.

Rodney says, "Uh," and Dex shrugs, pulls the covers back, and says, "Which side do you want?"

It's a double bed, and Rodney knows from long experience that it sags in the middle, and sometime around three in the morning it's not going to matter which side he started out on. He tries to think of something to say that won't end up with him sleeping on the couch when Dex heaves his shirt up over his head and pulls down his pants in one fluid motion and Rodney briefly loses the ability to swallow.

Dex sits on the bed and turns out the lights and says, "Chill, McKay."

Rodney trips over his pants trying to get them off in the dark.

\--

Up until maybe 2007 Rodney still published.

[Plot exposition explaining the infiltration of the Wraith hive, the collapse of the SGC, how Sheppard became the leader of a rag-tag group of resistance fighters based out of Cheyenne Mountain.]

\--

Rodney wakes up to the sound of Johnny Cash, which means Sheppard has changed the ringtones on his phone again. Rodney has a quick, mean thought that maybe Ronon and Sheppard will get along and become friends and Sheppard will finally leave him the fuck alone every once in a while, when a deep voice nearby says, "Is that Ring of Fire?"

Through the haze of irritation at Sheppard, Rodney realizes that he's tangled up in six foot six of Ronon Dex.

\--

Rodney takes Ronon down into the base, introduces him to Sheppard and then Zelenka and then the chemistry labs. Ronon disappears into a cloud of lab coats and bad hair and Rodney thinks -- well, that's that. He doesn't really see the chemists unless there's an absolute emergency, so he's surprised when Ronon shows up on his doorstep that night.

"Not enough beds," he says, "Sheppard put me in here."

Rodney blinks.

"He says thanks for the Humvee."

\--

"You could have just said," Katie Brown says, out of nowhere.

"Could have said _what?_ "

Rodney respects that the botanists provide useful functions -- they provide, for one thing, breathable air, he _likes_ breathable air -- he just doesn't respect them, on the whole, as _people_. He doesn't know where they got the idea that they can talk to him.

"That you were _gay_ , jeeze!"

He also doesn't respect people who say things like _jeeze_ without irony.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

[A series of scenes in which it is apparent that the entire base thinks that Ronon & Rodney are banging.]

\--

Rodney says, "I'm not your boyfriend. I don't know how you people all got that idea into your head, but it's not true."

Ronon spits toothpaste into the drain, turns the water on, and says, "Sure." He cups his hands under the tap, splashes water on his face and shakes the drops out of his hair. He says, "Are you coming to bed? Or are you recalibrating that thing."

Ronon switches off the light in the bathroom, strips his shirt off over his head and gets under the covers in an easy, practiced kind of movement. Rodney's been living in the same room for years, and he still stubs his toe against the corner of the bed-frame more times than not.

Rodney says, "I'm really _not_ ," but he's starting to feel like a record stuck in a skip.

"Yeah," Ronon says, punching his pillow and turning over, "Not up too late?"

Rodney nods. He turns the lights off on the way out.

\--

Rodney and Sheppard have unofficial status meetings over lunch on Tuesdays. Rodney runs down the list of new ways they've found to blow shit up, Sheppard talks about what they're going to try to blow up next. It takes about twenty minutes to get through actual information and then Sheppard spends the rest of the hour they've set aside catching Rodney up on base gossip, whether or not Rodney wants to hear it.

This time, Sheppard says, "I can't believe you're not sleeping with him." Rodney doesn't quite choke on his food, but Sheppard pounds him on the back hard enough to bruise, anyway.

Rodney hisses, "You did this," and Sheppard doesn't even bother to deny it. "Did we really not have enough beds?"

Sheppard leans back, looks smug, and says, "No."

\--

Forgive him for not noticing, it's been a _long god-damn night_ , but Rodney only realizes something is wrong when all of a sudden no one will meet his eyes. He finally looks down at his watch -- Christ, when did it get this late? -- and remembers in a rush that Ronon's team was supposed to be back six hours ago.

The radio clicks -- one, two, three times in a row, fast -- and Bruce makes an involuntary glance in Rodney's direction before thumbing it on, the signal heavy with static. Rodney can't make it out exactly, all he can hear are the words "heavy casualties" and "confirmed fatalities" and it's like the oxygen has been sucked out of the room, everyone trying not to look at him.

Zelenka carefully puts down the ancient artifact he's been examining and the dull thunk it makes hitting the counter-top spurs Rodney into motion. Rodney drops what he's holding, some sort of clipboard, a coffee cup, he doesn't even hear them hit the ground, and he yells, "He's not my fucking boyfriend!" Simpson jumps.

Rodney turns on his heel, walks towards the door, unseeing, and then -- Ronon's there. He's got a bandage on his upper arm which has bled through a dark crimson, and his shirt, his favorite shirt, the one Sheppard got him with Che Guevara on the front, is ripped.

Rodney touches the ragged edge where the shoulder of the shirt is supposed to meet the sleeve that isn't there anymore, and says, stupidly, "Your shirt."

Ronon touches Rodney's face and Rodney puts his hand on Ronon's chest, feeling his heartbeat, feeling Ronon solid and warm and alive under his hands.

"You're an asshole," Ronon says, and kisses him.

\--

[Ronon gets assigned to some scary dangerous mission! Rodney reacts to this.]

Mostly, people said yes when Rodney asked.

Rodney hated asking. The first time one of his recruits had died, he'd spent a week throwing up. Any time he'd maybe thought he was going to keep something down, he saw Grodin's face, not how he'd been at the end, burned beyond all recognition, but how he'd looked the day Rodney met him, happy and hopeful until Rodney had started talking.

Rodney says, "When we first met, I thought we were going to lose, but I didn't, uh -- I didn't actually care all that much. It didn't matter, I didn't really have anything left that was worth fighting for."

Ronon picks up his rucksack and walks to the door. He says, "You know how I feel about you," and Rodney does.


	2. Stargate Atlantis: McKay/Sheppard -- our bodies from the dirt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Title from how I always mis-remember the lyric _Slight of hand won't separate your body from the dirt you're standing on today_ from "You're The Good Things" by Modest Mouse.

"Rodney," John says, "Rodney, wake up, wake up, _wake up._ "

Rodney's body moves only with John's shoves, rocking slightly side to side, his hand making a dry scuffling sound where it drags against the ground.

"Rodney," John says again. In the distance he can hear the stuttering of P-90 fire, the electrical whine of Ronon's gun recharging, the relentless sound of approaching footsteps.

"Sheppard!" Ronon shouts, his name echoing off the walls of the cave. "Sheppard, _now!_ "

John heaves himself up, feet slipping in the blood covering the floor. 

"C'mon Rodney," John wheezes, grabbing Rodney under his shoulders and hauling him towards the mouth of the cave. "Starving for a week, you couldn't have _lost. more. weight?_ " He jerks Rodney back another foot with each word, his breath escaping in harsh pants.

Rodney, for once, is silent, and the fear that stirs up in John is what keeps him moving, keeps him focused through the endless twists of alien rock, through the tall scorched grass and the hail of gunfire, straight into a cloaked jumper and on towards home. Rodney never once moves.

\--

Between one thing and the next there's no time and when John finally gets a chance to catch his breath, he's standing in Elizabeth's office. Just outside the glass walls, there are clusters of anxious-looking scientists huddled together, and beyond that John can hear the white-noise of hushed voices echoing up from the control room.

Elizabeth is sitting, perched on the edge of her desk, and John is standing in the middle of the room, not quite sure where to put his feet. Elizabeth's eyes are red around the edges, ringed with smudges of ruined mascara and eyeliner. Her voice, though, is calm and steady and note perfect when she says, "I know how hard this must be for you."

John nods, not really hearing the words. There's blood soaked into his clothes and John is staring at that, at the splotches of reddish brown creeping up the sleeves of his jacket. The blood on his hands is already dried and shedding off in ugly red-brown flakes every time he clenches and unclenches his fists.

"John," Elizabeth says, "it wasn't your fault."

John can hardly hear his own voice over the rushing of blood past his ears as he says, "One of my men is _dead_ ," but it comes out louder than he's expecting, angrier, and Elizabeth flinches away. "It didn't just happen, _someone_ deserves to answer for it."

Elizabeth starts to shake her head, her lips shaping around a denial, but John says, "I'll see you at the service," and she stops.

"John," she says, again, a question and a reprimand and he can't take it. Behind the sound of Elizabeth saying his name is Rodney saying, quietly and surprised, " _Hey_ ," behind the sound of Rodney's voice is the endless sound of footsteps, the feeling of Rodney's cold hands in his, and it's too much.

John nods again, sharply, and walks out.

\--

Fifteen minutes spent washing his hands in scalding-hot water and there are still slivers of red-brown trapped under his fingernails. John's staring at himself in the mirror and wondering if his hands are steady enough to shave off his week's worth of beard, when there's a knock at the door.

John calls out, "Come in," in the same moment he thinks, _Go away_ , and the door doesn't know what to do until John walks over and palms it open manually. The door slides open and it's Zelenka, looking tired and carrying a large cardboard box.

Zelenka blinks at him for a second before saying, "May I come in?" and John nods. He shuffles through the door and looks around before dropping the box onto John's bed.

"Here," he says, his voice twice as loud as it was in the hall. "Last year, after the nano-virus, Rodney tells me for hours what to do when he dies. Science division gets laptops, notes, ten thousand tiny bits of ancient tech. You, he says, get everything else. Congratulations, Colonel Sheppard, you now have a cat." He nods at the box, where John can see the corner of a picture-frame sticking out the top.

John doesn't know quite what to do, so he says, "Thank you," and Zelenka nods again.

"Prescription mattress comes later. I must go. Suddenly I am very busy and Rodney's notes are very illegible." Zelenka tries to smile, but gives up half-way through. "Tomorrow," he starts, but John looks away and, miraculously, Zelenka drops it. "Well," he says, "until then."

Zelenka leaves, casting a short indecipherable look back at the box before nodding at John one last time and shuffling out.

John stares at the box for a long time without moving, as the light through the windows lengthens and dims and then goes out completely. This morning, Rodney had been bitching about frostbite and complaining about the lack of food, and he'd made everybody in that damn cave so miserable that they'd all forgotten to be scared. Now, barely eight hours later, John's staring at what's left of Rodney's life, and a single cardboard box seems just too _small_ to hold it all.

He doesn't know what else to do, so eventually he starts unpacking Rodney's things. And if once, when he's hanging up one of two PhDs now in his possession, he hears Rodney saying, "Hey, hey, that's breakable," well, that's just another thing to put away.

\--

There are over 300 people stationed in Atlantis and each and every once of them shows up for the service. They have to move it from the mess hall to the gate room, and it's standing room only because they don't have enough chairs. John stands at the front with Ronon and Teyla, awarded the honor of being closest to Rodney's dull gray military-issued casket. Across the make-shift aisle are Zelenka, Beckett, Cadman, and Katie Brown, who is wearing black veil over her red hair.

Elizabeth stands in front of the gate, posture straight with near-military precision, and says, "Every man and woman in this room is alive today because of the extraordinary and heroic work of Dr. Rodney McKay."

The eulogy is honest in a fond way, her mouth nearly twitching into a smile when she mentions some of Rodney's more aggravating personality traits. She manages to pack so many of Rodney's accomplishments into one half-hour speech that it makes John a little dizzy to think of them all, which is probably exactly what Rodney would have wanted. _Even now_ , John thinks, _he wouldn't be happy unless he was in some way showing up the rest of the world._

By the time Elizabeth's done, there are little pockets of people discreetly crying into their hands, and one or two women inexplicably weeping. Elizabeth catches John's eye for a split-second, but he shakes his head, mouths _I'm sorry_. She'd asked him if he wanted to say anything, said, "You really knew him best," but he'd said, "I wouldn't know what to, I mean," and she'd nodded in a sad, understanding way. She looks away now, back at the group en masse, and says, "If anyone else would like to say something," and about a half-dozen people take a step forward. Elizabeth smiles a little surprised smile and says, "Well then," and gives up the floor to a scientist John only knows as, _you know, that guy from geology, the one with the hair._

So many people end up standing up and saying a few words that it goes an hour and a half past what's scheduled. If Rodney'd known about it, he wouldn't have shut up for a month.

\--

Elizabeth catches him after the service with a hand on his arm, says, "John, if you don't mind staying a moment." Teyla nods and slips away, guiding a distracted Ronon towards the transporter like a lost animal. John watches as they go, stares stupidly at the empty hallway until Elizabeth says his name again and he can't help but look back at her.

She says, "I'd like you to see Dr. Heightmeyer." John jerks out of her hold, the words _I don't need help_ in the back of his throat. Elizabeth says, "I think she could really help," and there's an unspoken _do this or I will ground you_ somewhere behind her tearful eyes and kind expression.

She puts her hand on his shoulder, then, so hopeful and encouraging that he just nods his head and mumbles, "Sure, sounds good."

\--

No matter where you are in the galaxy, 0500 is too early, but Kate Heightmeyer looks bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, sitting tall and blond and gorgeous in the pre-dawn light. John had picked the time hoping she'd be exhausted, nursing a cup of coffee and forgetting half of what he'd said. No such luck.

John walks in and sits down, stares at his fingernails, the carpet, the dirt marks running up the sides of his boots. She says, "It was a beautiful service," instead of _hello_ , lifts an eyebrow and says, "Didn't you think so?" when he shrugs his shoulders.

John says, "I guess," and stares out the window. He doesn't say anything else, and eventually, the sun rises.

\--

For a week, no one goes off-world. Nobody even talks about it, so it's not a thing, there's no official reason for it. The gate only activates once: a wormhole to Earth and four marines carrying a gray box that John can't look at for more than a second without wanting to throw up.

John's got downtime, so he ends up stalking the halls during the day and running at night when he can't sleep. Mostly, he's avoiding the paperwork that's stacked up after a week of absence, but sometimes he thinks that if he doesn't keep moving he'll end up back in the cold and dark of that cave, that _fucking_ cave, and this time he won't make it out.

Sometimes, when he's so worn down he can't stop himself, he thinks about Rodney. He catches himself formulating questions to ask Rodney later, collecting anecdotes to tell Rodney the next time he sees him. Every once in a while he finds himself thinking things like, _if only we'd had more time._

John stops by Elizabeth's office every couple of hours, and each time he finds her staring a little too intently at whatever she's reading, her fingers constantly tapping against the side of her coffee mug. She always looks up and says his name, sounding a little startled, her hands sweeping out in jerky half-aborted gestures. She always offers him tea, and he always says no, but he sticks around for a couple more minutes and they look at each other awkwardly without saying much. With Elizabeth, John can tell there are at least two things she doesn't say to everything she does, and just looking at her, her iron-tight control, makes him tired.

At the end of the day, when he's too exhausted to move, he collapses into bed wide awake. Every once in a while, lying in bed and staring up into the dark, he almost sees Rodney out of the corner of his eye, lurking around the edges of the room, running his fingers through the dust collected inch-high on the desk. Sometimes it's even comforting.

Once, in the morning, he thinks he can see prints in the dust, swirls of multivariable calculus, linear statistical regressions, meaningless coefficients and hyperbolic curves. John reaches out to touch the symbols, trace the curves of logarithmic functions and exponential expressions, but he blinks and they're gone like a trick of the light, the dust scattered in tiny wave-like formations where they've been pushed back by endless summer breezes.

At the end of the week, when John feels strung-out on not sleeping and wired on a sudden out-of-nowhere spike of adrenaline, he can almost hear Rodney saying, "Look, you're thinking so loud you're keeping me awake." John knows in the back of his mind that he's losing it, but still, he lets the ghost of Rodney's voice lull him unconscious. "Go to sleep already," Rodney says, and John does.

\--

Teyla says, "you are distracted." A petulant part of John thinks, _well duh_ , but he just shakes his head, concentrating on the feeling of the sticks in his hands, the mat under his bare feet. He's concentrating so hard on not being distracted, he's flat on his back and hurting in about a dozen new places before he has time to say _ow._

Teyla gives him a long, inscrutable look before giving him a hand up and saying, "We are neither of us strangers to grief."

John rolls his shoulders, relaxes his muscles, resettles his weight on the balls of his feet. Teyla eyes him warily, rolling her sticks over the back of her hands over and over again as they circle each other in wide arcs.

Teyla says, "what happened to Dr. McKay-" and John steps off his left foot, swinging two-handed at Teyla's stomach. Teyla dodges back easily, hooking his wrist and spinning him around fast enough he can feel his ankle threatening to give. She hits him in the back of the knee twice in quick succession and he lands hard on his kneecaps, one of her elbows hooked around his throat. "You are letting your guilt cloud your judgment," she says sharply, letting go with a shove that sends him sprawling face-first into the mat.

John pushes himself back up to his feet, pissed off and breathing heavy. Teyla just sets her sticks down on the low bench near the window and looks at him, her eyes catching the low light.

"My people learned long ago," she says, carefully feeling out each word, "that those who let grief consume them become weak." John can feel blood rushing to his face, shame creeping in around the edges of his anger. "When the Wraith come, the ones who die are the ones who fall behind. We can let the grief in... but it cannot slow us down." John stares petulantly at the ground, refusing to meet Teyla's eyes eyen as she puts her hands on either side of his head and touches her forehead to his. He stands there, staring at the mat, the sweat dripping from the tips of his fingers, even after she's gone.

\--

John goes to bed that night still feeling unsettled and wakes up at four in the morning to Rodney saying, "why do you have all my stuff?" He jerks up and awake so violently he falls off the bed, landing in an ungraceful heap at Rodney's feet. Rodney looks down at him puzzled. "Seriously, you have a picture of my cat, what is that?"

John shoves himself into a sitting position and says, "you _died._ " John thinks _this is it, I'm going crazy_ , but Rodney just looks down at him, puzzled. "You died," he says because it's the only thing that makes any sense to say, the only words in his head. "You're dead. I saw you die."

Rodney shakes his head in comical disbelief, his hand moving up to his neck to find his pulse. He says, "no, that doesn't make any," jabbing his long fingers harder and harder into his throat. "I can't be dead."

John rocks back onto his heels and crosses his wrists over his knees. "You got shot on M3X-598." He mimes a gun cocking with his right hand, points it at Rodney. Rodney touches his stomach, fingers skimming right over the spot where the bullet went in, but there's not trace of it. John says, "you bled out there, you were dead by the time we dragged you back through the gate. You're dead." But Rodney just looks like he did at the funeral, lifelike and whole once they'd cleaned the blood off. 

Rodney says, "I-" his voice coming out all high-pitched and squeaky. "But I'm still _here_." He looks confused and lost, like Einstein and Newton just walked in the door and admitted to making it all up. John would laugh if that was something he did anymore.

"You, uh," John says, scratching the back of his neck, "you left me everything." Rodney's eyes go even wider as he takes in the room, the books lying on the shelves, the DVDs stacked by the laptop, the degrees hanging on the wall. He laughs suddenly, startled.

"I die and you get creepy and obsessive. Great!" Rodney laughs again, and slumps a little against the wall.

"Look," he says, "look. I can't be dead. You've got something wrong." He looks at John then, his eyes pleading. John sighs and looks down.

"I was _there_ , Rodney," John says. "You're dead. We sent your body back to Earth. Elizabeth said some really nice things at your funeral."

Rodney says, "really?" in a small surprised voice.

John nods. Rodney looks smug for a good five seconds before he goes back to looking panicky and confused.

"Look," he starts to say, "I, uh, I don't know what's going on here." If nothing else had felt strange and off about this situation, Rodney _voluntarily admitting defeat_ would have knocked John for a loop.

"You're," John starts to say, but gives up half-way through. Suddenly he's dead tired, too tired to deal with whatever's happening, and he pushes off of the floor and climbs back into bed, closing his eyes. He says, "you're not really here," keeping his eyes closed, and he can hear Rodney snorting in disbelief.

John tries valiantly to sleep, keeps his eyes closed for what feels like an eternity. But he can hear Rodney shuffling around the room muttering to himself, and he's too keyed up to ignore it.

"Ok," John says, hours and hours and probably just minutes later, "if you're not dead, why are you still here?"

There's a long pause and then Rodney says, in a small defeated voice, "the doors won't open for me." But when John opens his eyes, Rodney isn't there. He goes back to sleep.

\--

John wakes up, groggy and confused, to an empty room. 

After what happened in Afghanistan, he'd had vivid dreams, night terrors, hallucinations, the whole PTSD workout. He'd closed his eyes for months and seen the faces of people he hadn't saved, had long, boring conversations with his dead father, heard the distant sound of a car backfiring and found himself standing in the smoking ruins of a downed Blackhawk.

He looks at himself in the mirror; he's got dark shadows under his eyes, days-old stubble, and looks like he hasn't had a good night's sleep in a month. Last night, everything had seemed vividly real, but in the hazy light of the Atlantean morning sun, things look different. He washes his face, shaves, brushes his teeth, and by the time he walks out his door, he's convinced himself it was just a dream.

\--

Elizabeth calls him down to her office a week later and says, "you know what you have to do." John wants to protest that it's too soon, but Elizabeth says, " _John_ ," in the voice he's never won an argument against.

Zelenka's taken over as head of the science division, so John asks him first. Zelenka's face goes immediately white and after a good minute of blank eyes and a down-turned mouth, he simply turns and walks out of the lab without saying anything. John asks about a dozen other scientists and the only one who doesn't call him a heartless bastard or spit on him is Simpson.

 

She looks him in the eye for a long time before saying, "you haven't slept much, have you?"

John shakes his head _no_ and she says, "I'll do it."

John reaches out to shake her hand, and he wants to promise her he won't get her killed, but all he can say is, "thanks," and, "we ship out at 0700 tomorrow." Simpson nods. Her hand in John's is damp and shaking a little, but her face is a picture of control. He'd seen Rodney in the middle of panic so strong it could stop a man's heart, and Rodney'd bitched and moaned and freaked out as much as possible, but his hands had always been steady. Always, up until the last moment, when he'd said, "hey, I think," and his hand had trembled as he reached for the hole in his stomach.

"McKay is," Simpson starts, her voice breaking off half the way through, "McKay was a son of a bitch, sir. But he was a damn fine scientist and occasionally a good man." John almost smiles. Simpson gives his hand a little squeeze before letting go. "It's an honor, Colonel."

\--

Five minutes into the session, Heightmeyer says, "I can see where this is going," and pulls out a book of crossword puzzles.

Heightmeyer says, "twenty-five down, capitol of Laos, nine letters."

John looks up from his endless stack of personnel files, transfer requests, inventory lists and budgets, and says, "Vientiane."

\--

Rodney says, "you'd think I'd be haunting my lab."

John looks up from War and Peace and Rodney's leaning against the wall, perfectly at home in John's room. He pushes off the wall and John can almost see the tiny smudges his fingers have left on the glass by the door.

John asks, "why, left the coffee pot on?" and Rodney half-smiles-half-winces, his eyes saying _very funny, Colonel_.

"Sometimes..." he starts, trailing off to pick up a stack of mission reports lying on the desk. "Sometimes I'm here when you're not. It's amazing how much stuff to do in here there _isn't_. Your handwriting is terrible." He has the audacity to glare at John, waving the mission reports around in accusation. It's not like Rodney has a leg to stand on; John's seen Rodney's notes, illegible enough to actually be code. Rodney looks caught up for a second, staring intently at something John can't see, before his attention snaps back to the papers in hand.

Rodney says, "Simpson's a good choice," and John looks up, startled. Usually, when he has conversations with dead people, there's a few minutes of _hi, how are you, hey you look good_ , and then half an hour of _why couldn't you save me? I died because of you._ Rodney doesn't look angry and accusing, he just looks tired. "Zelenka wouldn't do it, huh? It's probably for the best. He's a good engineer, but he falls apart like wet tissue paper in the field. Jumpy little guy."

John cautiously nods and Rodney bounces a little on his heels before walking up and perching on the edge of John's bed. John can actually feel the weight of him pushing down the mattress, and he thinks, _this is crazy_ , but can't help reaching out to grab Rodney's arm anyway. Rodney is deceptively solid under John's hand, the skin by his wrist soft and smooth and exactly room temperature. The Rodney John remembers was a ball of heat; John had staved off frostbite in that fucking cave by huddling up next to Rodney, warmed his hands by pressing them close to Rodney's spine.

"You're dead," John says, stupidly, and Rodney rolls his eyes.

"Ok, fine, I'm dead, we've got that." Rodney says, slowly, in his _I'm talking to a moron_ voice. "Now, it's a little annoying, but I'm willing to move past it because, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm still here." He shakes John's hand off his arm, gesturing wildly around the room.

John shakes his head, because this has moved far beyond a typical post-traumatic stress hallucination and well into the realm of full-blown psychosis. Rodney glares, crossing his arms over his chest, the corners of his mouth tugging down, like John's suddenly become a problem for him to solve. It's been a long week, too much to do on too little sleep, John's just too tired to deal with a dead sulking _dead!_ physicist in his room in the middle of the night. He lets go of Rodney's arm, thinks the lights off, and turns over to go to sleep.

"You can't just ignore me," Rodney says.

John says, calmly and rationally, "you're dead and I'm hallucinating from lack of sleep."

Rodney's voice goes tight and deliberate in a way John's only heard once, _I have never asked this of you before._ "Look," he says, "look. This isn't right, this doesn't make any sense. Why am I _here?_ I'm not dead. I'm not dead, I know I'm not dead. You have to - look. You have all my stuff, right? I can prove it. Grab, um, there - the Doctorate." He points at the wall of degrees and awards and John reluctantly rolls out of bed and takes one down off the wall.

John says, "Ingram?" and Rodney mutters, "family name, dead great uncle, long story." John just sort of gawks at the frame for a moment before Rodney snaps, "don't just stare, open it! There's a catch on the back." John finds it, a little triangle of plastic, and when he pushes it the whole thing pops open, the backing sliding to the ground along with a small white slip of paper. John picks it up.

"The paper in your hand says, 'you win, you bastard.'" John looks down, and there it is, in a scratchy nearly-illegible scrawl. He looks back up and Rodney's face is caught somewhere between pleading and smug. "Now, if I'm a hallucination, tell me how you knew that."

John doesn't know what to say. He looks up, suddenly shocked and maybe frightened because Rodney is dead. Dead. John had felt his heartbeat slow to sluggish and then stop, had felt Rodney's life bleeding out onto the cold ground. "You," he says, and Rodney looks at him, John's fear and confusion mirrored back in his eyes.

"Yeah," Rodney says, "yeah. So what do we do now?"

John starts to move forward, starts to say something, anything, but suddenly the radio on the desk lets out a loud chirp. John's distracted for less than a second, but when he looks back up, Rodney's gone and everything's back in place like nothing ever happened. He grabs his radio, says, "I'll have to call you back," into the mouthpiece without listening to whoever's on the other end.

He grabs the same degree off the wall, _Doctor of Philosophy upon Rodney Ingram McKay_ , pops the back open and it's still there, tucked into the lower right-hand corner. "You win, you bastard," John says, out loud, and it seems oddly fitting.

\--

John says, "do you, um, do you believe in ghosts?" Heightmeyer looks at him for a long, long moment and writes something down on a yellow legal pad. John looks up at the clock, two minutes left, says, "forget it," and spends the rest of the time staring at down at his knuckles, bone-white where they're clutching the armrest of his chair.

\--

Around 0300 Atlantis Standard the whole city's dead quiet. John is bone-dead tired, his boots heavy with foreign mud, whole body coated in a fine layer of green-red dust and crushed-up deep blue leaves. The graveyard-shift gate technicians barely even look up from their monitors while the team stumbles past, Teyla favoring her left leg in a shuffle-step walk that bears only a passing resemblance to her typical grace.

John waves off his team at the transporter: Teyla to the infirmary, Simpson back to her quarters, Ronon to wherever he disappears to at night. John's got just enough energy left in him to stagger into the shower. When he walks out of his bathroom, finally and miraculously clean, Rodney's there, perched on the edge of John's bed, chewing on the skin around his thumbnail.

There's a minute where John thinks, _great, just what I needed._

Rodney snaps his head up and says, "hey, if it's a bad time..." but John just shakes his head, sending tiny little water droplets everywhere. Rodney visibly relaxes, slouching back against the bed and letting out a little hiss of breath. He spends a second looking apologetic, even goes so far as to mumble, "sorry, it's not like I have control over this," and John says, "yeah, what you gonna do?" and it's simultaneously the strangest and most mundane conversation John's ever had.

Rodney sort of barks out a laugh, lets himself fall back onto John's bed. He says, "so this is weird."

John sits down on the edge of the bed, suddenly feeling awkward and on the spot, but Rodney's just lying on his back, staring up into space and drumming his heels against the bed frame.

John stares at the window over the bed, and for a long minute nothing happens.

Rodney reaches back somewhere across the bed and his hand comes back holding a deck of cards with the words "World Series of Poker" stamped across the back. He pokes his head up, barely looking at John down his nose, and says, "I'm teaching you how to count cards. No one should waste a good head for combinatorics." And they play round after round of blackjack well past sunrise, until John starts winning.

[I have a note here saying: "put in John putting on clothes, awkwardly." hahaha]

\--

Heightmeyer says, "tell me about Rodney," and John feels a little bit like he's going to throw up.

\--

More often than not, John stumbles back to his apartment after his shift to Rodney hanging out and playing the special version of solitaire he's programmed on John's computer, the whole thing written in BASIC using a compiler he wrote on John's machine because he was _bored_. He always looks kind of excited when John walks in, head popping up from behind John's laptop like a prairie dog. John thinks it's comforting, having someone to come home to. He starts bringing back things, DVDs, jell-o from the mess, small ancient gadgets stolen from the lab and the tools Rodney needs to take them apart.

It's suddenly routine, spending all his off-time hanging out with Rodney, and John starts thinking about it all day, picking out what movie he wants to watch, collecting anecdotes to tell Rodney when he gets back from being off-world.

Sometimes when they watch something, sitting on John's bed with the laptop propped up on a couple Russian novels, sometimes Rodney reaches over to get something, the DVD case on the nightstand, and his thigh brushes against John's and John can feel his heart-rate ratcheting up, his palms sweating against the Athosian bedspread. It's like dating in high school and sometimes John feels stupidly nervous but it's still just _Rodney._

\--

Up ahead, Simpson is twitching at any unexpected noise, something between a flinch and a jump, but nothing too bad. John thinks, _nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs_ , and is about to say it out loud when he realizes it's one of those things that Teyla and Ronon just won't get.

Ronon's shadowing Simpson, slightly to the left and two steps back, and John doesn't blame him. They've been out on ten missions together, trade negotiations and other milk runs, but Simpson still feels vulnerable in a way Rodney never used to, her head and shoulders tucked in around her scanner as she's looking for energy readings without paying enough attention to her surroundings.

John and Teyla are pulling up the back, the palms of John's hands resting overlapped on the P-90 strapped to his vest, Teyla's fingertips lightly tracing the outline of her side-arm. John squints up into the early-morning P3F-815 light and asks, "do you believe in ghosts?"

Teyla shoots him a calculating look out of the corner of her eye and says, "my people believe that our ancestors are with us always." John nods, slowly.

"Guys!" Simpson calls out, voice strong and giddy, "guys! _Look at this!_ "

John trudges up the hill behind her until he reaches the point where he can see up over the top. "Whoa!" John looks down into the valley and stops so fast he almost loses his footing on the loose rocks around the top of the ridge.

Simpson turns to him, a grin splitting her face in two, her eyes shining with the half-crazed light of scientific discovery. She suddenly looks all of seventeen as she does an excited little hand-wave and says, "I know!"

John doesn't notice Teyla approach until all of a sudden she's standing right next to him and smiling. "I believe Dr. Weir would like to see this."

Ronon whistles appreciatively under his breath and punches John in the shoulder, nearly sending him head-first down the ravine. "Bet she's not the only one."

\--

The _Caelestis_ is about the size of a small city, and built along the same general specifications. There's a main street down the center, lined with rooms that look like restaurants and general stores, secondary hallways leading off towards living quarters. The bridge is about where you'd expect they'd have the town square, and John can just imagine it strung up with bunting for Ancient equivalent of Homecoming.

It's eerily quiet, cold and dead and freakishly clean, but the whole thing lights up like Christmas the moment John steps through the door.

"There is no dust on these consoles," Teyla says, suddenly, sounding uncharacteristically spooked, "nor any spider webs or signs of vermin."

Simpson bounces from console to console, poking at the lights and cooing, talking to herself under her breath. At no point does she snap at John to stop touching things and he just wanders aimlessly through the halls, poking at things and watching when they light up.

In an out of the way room, a 3-D hologram pops up of a orange octopus-like creature that gurgles at him for a long moment until the image resolves itself into a strange, Ancient version of whack-a-mole. Every few seconds, tentacles pop up out of an endless ocean and wave menacingly until he pushes them back down with his hands. He lets himself get lost in the rhythm of the game until the octopus floats back up, grins triumphantly, and John realizes that he's lost. He finally looks around the whole room, full of other holographic games and miniature spaceships, finds something that looks like a ball-pit and realizes that the Ancients lived their whole lives on these kinds of ships, grew up and raised families in the middle of the dark vacuum of space.

[Note: "empty where it should be full of tiny genius children"]

John says, "this place gives me the creeps," and jumps about a foot in the air when Teyla says, "I agree."

\--

John spends the whole meeting feeling like he's under some kind of anesthetic, nodding at the right places, but not saying anything when the conversation turns his way. Instead, Lorne chimes in with all the right things, arguing for a bigger security detail for the scientists, guaranteeing at least two preliminary sweeps of the ship before it's opened to the general population. Twice, John looks up from where he's drawing random symbols on his notepad to see Elizabeth staring at him, an odd look on her face.

After the meeting, it's like someone's lit fires underneath everybody's chair - the room clears out in seconds, scientists chattering excitedly as they rush out of the room, military personnel following the scientists to make sure they don't hurt themselves. John stays in his chair, ignoring the rest of the world, and absently scratching pen over paper in erratic, meaningless lines. Eventually, he hears Elizabeth clear her throat, realizes he's not alone in the room after all.

Elizabeth says, "is there anything you want to tell me?" and John feels like he's back in elementary school. She says, "ever since you found the ship, you've been acting-" and John sort of loses it mid-sentence and stands up suddenly, sending his chair rolling into the back wall.

"Look," John starts, not sure what he's trying to say.

Elizabeth shakes her head, says, "why can't you at least _pretend_ to be excited about this?" 

John feels something tight and uncontrolled moving up through him, feels his voice rising hysterically from his throat, saying, "it's great! It's wonderful! It's the scientific find of the god-damn century!" He's banging his fist on the table, coffee mugs and laptops jumping and shuddering with the impact, Elizabeth's eyes wide and panicked, "I can't be the only person here thinking it should have been Rodney!"

Elizabeth starts shaking her head before he's even stopped talking. She says, "John, listen to yourself. No, _listen_ to yourself. He's gone. You have to let go." John can't bring himself to look her in the eyes, instead focusing on the wall just over her right shoulder.

He wants to tell her she's wrong, that letting go isn't that easy, that Rodney isn't gone, but he can see some small amount of fear in her eyes. Fear _for_ him or fear _of_ him, he can't tell, but it really doesn't matter. He says, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that." Elizabeth shakes her head again, says, "that's not what I meant," but John doesn't want to hear it.

As long as he's doing his job, he's fine. _Fine._

\--

Along with everything else, John inherited Rodney's subscriptions to _Scientific American, Nature,_ about a dozen Physics and Astrophysics trade journals, and _Maxim._ John reads an article every once in a while, when he's got time, but after a while they started stacking up on all his furniture until his quarters started to resemble a dentist's office.

John comes home to Rodney reading _The Journal Of Fluid Mechanics_ vol. 546 and laughing to himself, John assumes at whatever it is they're getting wrong this time. "Hey," John says, and Rodney looks up, tucking his finger into the magazine so he doesn't lose his place.

Rodney says, "I just had the strangest urge to call you ‘honey.' Domesticity does strange things to me." John shakes his head, takes off his jacket and throws it in the general vicinity of Rodney's head.

"You have a weird definition of domesticity," he says, and hears Rodney's strange percussive laugh echoing behind him as he sits down to take of his boots. Rodney's right, in a way, though. He's been coming home to Rodney bored and in his quarters more nights than he hasn't. Rodney, in a fit of what John can only assume was madness, even went so far as to clean the one night John had to work late.

Rodney says, "so, _honey_ , how was your day at work?"

John freezes for half a second, not long enough that you'd see it if you weren't looking for it.

"Not bad, you know. Not much happened," he says, voice aiming for casual, "went to another planet, found an Ancient mothership, I think I got a splinter from when Ronon accidentally shoved me into a tree on the way back." John can tell without looking that Rodney's gaping at him, he can hear a rustle of paper as Rodney's journal falls to the floor.

"You _what?_ " Rodney's only ever speechless for tiny pockets of time.

John shrugs, doesn't look back at Rodney as he says, "it's no big deal, not even an inch, I think I can get it out with a pair of tweezers."

Rodney sputters for a second before he all but yells, "the _ship!_ Tell me about the _Ancient mothership!_ " His sense of humor hasn't really improved post-mortem.

John finally looks at Rodney, takes in his shock and amazement. John says, "don't get your panties in a knot, Rodney, we don't know much yet. They're going to send in a bigger team tomorrow, figure out if it still flies. Simpson thinks most of the primary systems are still operational." John doesn't stop talking so much as trail off. He keeps expecting Rodney to interrupt him, ask questions, steam-roll over him with opinions. But Rodney stays oddly quiet. "Hey," John says, "you with me here?"

Rodney nods, but John can see something in his eyes, something close to regret. "It'd be nice," Rodney starts, but doesn't finish. John knows what he means, anyway.

\--

[Note: "John falls into a strange pattern, one that keeps up for weeks and weeks, his life separated equitably between the real world and the twilight zone. Things slowly normalize, Elizabeth stops treading so lightly around him, he almost nearly beats Teyla during practice; everything's good to great until Rodney suddenly stops showing up and John feels like he's been punched in the gut."]

\--

Rodney disappears for three weeks and when he suddenly shows up again, they're fighting.

John comes home to Rodney surrounded by two-dozen reports, file folders inch-thick with research schematics and circuit diagrams haphazardly spread out over every available surface. Nearly all of John's possessions have been shoved back against the walls to make more room and Rodney's prescription mattress and all the pillows and blankets are piled in the middle of the floor where Rodney's crouching and typing frantically on John's laptop.

John says, "whoa!" and Rodney barely acknowledges him.

"It says here," Rodney says, the sound of his voice muffled by the pen in his mouth and bounced back to John via his laptop screen, "you're planning a field test of the engines tomorrow."

John starts to say something, maybe _yes_ , maybe _that's not your concern anymore_ , maybe _what the hell did you do to my room_ , but Rodney cuts him off as soon as he draws breath. He says, "you can't do that. It won't work, it'll backfire, it'll be the worst idea ever."

John says, "there are people who know more about this than you do." Rodney looks up at him then, has the audacity to look betrayed.

"But it _won't work._ " Rodney pauses for a second, takes in John's look of disbelief. "Fine," he says, "I'll admit that they've actually crawled around the damn thing, but we both know they're completely lost without me." John half-nods, nothing you could take as encouragement. Rodney says, "they're doing it wrong. You have to talk to them."

Rodney's looking at him, pleading but not saying anything, not trying to run him over with an explanation. John can only say, "and tell them what?"

Rodney turns his laptop screen around, grabs about three files at random, and shoves them into John's hands. Rodney says, "that ship is on that planet for a reason. I think I can see things differently now, I think I know things that I shouldn't. I can't explain, but what's happening here is wrong." He jabs at the screen, pointing to one of the power-up simulations that Simpson and Zelenka came up with. Rodney pulls the pen out of his mouth, circles about a dozen different diagrams on a dozen different sheets of paper, starts talking mile-a-second about power fluctuations and magnetic fields and radiation. John lets the files he's holding slip from his fingers, holds up his hands in an attempt to stem the flow of information. Rodney looks up at him, startled, and hisses, "hey, _listen to me._ "

John shakes his head _no_ , says, "it's not like they're going to take me seriously when I'm suddenly an expert on things I don't understand, Rodney." Rodney looks at him, looks through him, and starts explaining everything again in smaller words.

Rodney's shirt is soft and warm when John grabs it to haul him to his feet. It shocks Rodney enough that he actually shuts up long enough for John to get a word in. "Hey!" John says, tightening his grip on Rodney's shirt, "I can't just walk in and tell them to call it all off because _Rodney's ghost_ told me to!"

Rodney shakes his head and just bowls over what John's trying to say, doesn't listen, just says, "that doesn't matter."

John lets go of Rodney's shirt, pushes Rodney back and away from the crazy mess on the floor, puts some distance between them and Rodney's sudden obsession. John says, "I don't think you understand what I'm dealing with here." Rodney looks like he's about to say something else and John puts his hand over Rodney's mouth so that it comes out as muffled protests. John says, "out there," and points with his other hand at the door and the rest of the sane world, "you're dead. Out there, I'm having _trouble_ adjusting to your death and people think I'm going _crazy_."

Rodney's eyes widen comically and he starts talking again, his lips moving wetly against John's palm.

"When I'm here and you're here and you're talking to me, everything makes sense. But when I leave here and you're _gone_ , things are different. I can't walk into a room full of people much, much smarter than me and tell them they're all wrong because I have a hunch. And I certainly can't walk in there and tell them that Dr. McKay says the mission's a no-go, because Dr. McKay is _dead._ "

Rodney looks marginally calmer and John decides it's time to take his hand away. He steps back, wipes his hand on his pant-leg and Rodney says, "ok, fine. But we need to figure something out. You do this test tomorrow, and something bad is going to happen. I'm talking _Chernobyl_ bad."

John moves his hands out and away from his body, tries to convey his lack of resources, his complete helplessness in the face of whatever's happening. Rodney looks at John for a long moment before turning and kicking the mattress on the floor, scattering reports and read-outs and personnel files. He says, his voice suddenly furious, "God _damn_ it. I don't have any time."

John takes a cautious step forward. He says, "Rodney, there's nothing I can do."

There's a long frustrating pause before Rodney says, "I can't control when this happens, when I'm here." He waves his arms around the room, kicks a pile of bedding and ball-point pens. "I'm here and then I'm not, sometimes I can feel it coming, but it's not... it could happen at any time, we have to do something _now._ "

John says, again, "there's nothing I can do," and Rodney turns his anger towards him.

Rodney looks at John with all the contempt he can pack into one look. He looks at John with what John imagines is the sum total of months of repressed intellectual superiority and arrogance. He says, in his most disdainful voice, "that's just not good enough."

For months and months John had actually forgotten just how much Rodney _pisses him off_. It's amazing; no one speaks ill of Atlantis's dead, and sometime after the moment he'd dragged Rodney's body back through the gate, Rodney'd been transformed from the asshole of the Pegasus galaxy to someone on a fast-track to canonization. The caustic personality had been washed away in the retelling until all that was left was the genius.

John says, voice gone tight and low, "you're wrong."

"I can't believe it," Rodney shrieks, jabbing John forcefully in the sternum. "You're the only person in the whole universe I can talk to and you're not even listening to me!"

"How would you know if you never _shut up_ long enough to let me talk?" John knocks Rodney's hand away from his chest and stomps to the door, ready to leave him trapped there and alone. He can hear Rodney behind him, mouth gaping open and closed like a catfish, and he says, "you want to talk to yourself? Fine. I don't have to be here for that."

He has every intention of leaving, going for a run or bugging Elizabeth or doing surprise inspections until he's calmed himself down enough to stop wishing Rodney dead _again_ , but Rodney says, "wait," quietly and a little desperate and the way he sounds... it's like John makes up his whole entire world. Something inside of John breaks a little to hear it.

He turns and Rodney is looking at him, pleading at him with his jaw set, like he's asking John not to make him say something out loud. It ramps John back up from frustrated to pissed-off angry and he stalks over to where Rodney's huddled on the other side of the doorframe, slamming his hand against the wall, close to Rodney's head. Rodney looks at him, eyes wide, their faces barely an inch apart.

John mutters, "God _damn_ it," as the fight goes out of him. His hand slides down the wall until Rodney reaches up and catches it, fingers circling around his wrist. "You always," John says, but suddenly Rodney leans forward, stopping John's mouth with his.

There's a startled moment where John's still trying to say what he was going to say and Rodney's shocked and stilled by his own actions, and then it's like an engine turning over, they go from zero to sixty faster than a Maserati. Rodney gasps wetly against John's mouth, his hand clenching and unclenching around John's forearm like a heartbeat. " _God_ ," John says again, for a completely different reason. Rodney lets John's arm drop, reaching his hands around John's back, scrabbling for purchase, sliding on the slick fabric of John's uniform. John leans in to kiss Rodney, resting his elbows on Rodney's shoulders, his hands braced against the wall, creating a small closed space around both of their heads.

Rodney says, "John," his voice running ragged, broken up by little gasping breaths. This is the first time Rodney's ever called him _John_ and he can feel it like a shiver down his spine. Rodney says, "John, you have _no_ idea how much I want to..." He smiles a little crooked smile that makes his eyes light up and kisses John again. " _No idea_ , but we can't now."

John thinks _unfair_ , but Rodney's probably right, Rodney's always right, so he nods anyway, says, "ok, _Chernobyl bad_ , I get it." Neither of them move for a long moment, just leaning against each other and breathing the same air.

Eventually Rodney reaches up, pushes his hands gently against John's chest and says, "I think I have an idea."

\--

John leans against a control panel on the main bridge, casual on purpose, lets his fingertips trail across the cool and dust-free surface. He thinks, _on_ , thinks thick Latin-sounding words that Rodney made him memorize the night before. Simpson and Zelenka and Kusanagi scurry by, talking a mile a minute and ignoring him. No one snaps at him to stop touching things, or yells at him that he has something more important to be doing, and John misses Rodney like an open wound, even when he feels the _Caelestis_ waking up all around him.

The ship starts chattering at him in Ancient, strings of words he doesn't recognize and the few he does, things Rodney drilled into his head over and over, the words for _power, overload, failure_. The word for _radiation _starts to replay on a loop, along with the words for _experimental_ and _prototype_ and _unstable_. John thinks, _we have to warn them_ , and the ships suddenly explodes with light and sound, the Ancient symbols for WARNING and DANGER flashing on every console. It's enough to stop Kusanagi mid-word, enough that Simpson turns to him and hisses, "what did you do?" It's enough that Zelenka looks up with panicked eyes and says, "we're standing down the test."__

__John mutters, "you win, you bastard," and can almost feel a small warm breeze move the hairs on the back of his neck._ _

__\--_ _

__John stumbles back into his room, his legs a little adrenaline-shaky, and Rodney's pacing back and forth, talking to himself._ _

__John says, "it worked," and Rodney looks at him with a sort of stunned wonder._ _

__\--_ _

__[???]_ _

__"You know how you put things off, but you know you're going to do them _sometime?_ You always think you have time until you don't anymore. And I always thought I'd have time, that we'd have time." John is looking at everything but Rodney, and if he doesn't look at him, he can pretend he's talking to an empty room._ _

__"I heard what you said," Rodney says, but John still can't look at him. "I heard what you said when I died. _John._ "_ _

__John stares down at his hands and says, "I had plans." Across the room, he can hear the rustling of Rodney's clothes, the hiss of useless breath, but Rodney's so unnaturally still, so quiet. "How did we not have time?"_ _

__Rodney says, "it's entirely possible I came back because I'm in love with you."_ _

__John says, "you're what?" and Rodney looks away._ _

__"I just said, it's _possible._ "_ _

__\--_ _

__[Note: "moving to a new section!!" Reading it now I think I meant to make this the ending.]_ _

__Rodney pulls back, slightly, looking panicked and John shakes his head. "You have time," John says desperately, and kisses Rodney again, "for this, you have time." Rodney's shaking his head, John can feel the muscles in his shoulders shifting and tensing. "Say it," John growls, looking Rodney straight in the eye._ _

__Rodney stills for a minute, says, "I have time," and suddenly they've got all the time in the world._ _

__[Note: "adding in here" ??]_ _

__Because the truth of it is John had fallen in love with Rodney the moment he'd said, "I was thinking you could shoot me," the smile on his face manic and invulnerable. Every moment after that had been saturated in it, every stupidly heroic and amazing thing Rodney'd done had made it that much worse._ _

__In the cave, in that _fucking_ cave, Rodney had said, "hey, I think," and just toppled over, his pale white fingers steepled over the hole in his gut, blood running down his wrists. John had stopped dead in his tracks and said, "no," barely a whisper, and vaulted over Teyla and two Marines to get to him. "No."_ _

__Ronon had stopped too, but John had said, "go, go, secure the gate, we have to move _now!_ ," and he'd nodded and ran ahead like a man possessed._ _

__"No," John had said, "hey, Rodney, you can't do this to me." Rodney's eyes had still been open, fixed on John's, but the only sounds he was making were little wet-sounding gurgles as bubbles of blood escaped from his lips. "You can't do this to me because I _love you_ , you bastard. I had _plans_." Rodney's eyes had gone wide and soft with understanding before they closed, his hand raised briefly to paint a line of blood down the side of John's face, and that had been it._ _

__"Wake up," John had said as Lorne called back, " _Sir!_ "_ _

__Rodney's eyes had stayed closed._ _

__They're open now._ _

__[Note: "bridging here" Pretty sure this is where I meant to include the reveal that Rodney ascended instead of actually dying!]_ _

__Rodney says, "I think they need me." John shakes his head, whispers, "no," into the hollow of Rodney's shoulder. Rodney's nearly vibrating with energy. "No, listen," he says, "there are things I can do this way."_ _

__John says, "not yet." He can feel Rodney shaking his head, his chest expanding with useless breath. John says, "they need you, fine, but they can wait. We need you more. I," he chokes a little, emotion swamping his ability to speak, "I need you more. They can _wait._ "_ _

__Rodney says, "John," but John holds fast, clutching at Rodney's bicep hard enough to feel the muscle give. John says, "not yet. Stay. _Stay._ Rodney, there's no way they can't wait. They get you forever, give me fifty years."_ _

__Rodney tenses, and John can tell he's thinking. "But," he says, his voice shaky and uncertain, "what if they, what if they won't -" John lets go of Rodney's arm and smacks him in the shoulder hard enough that Rodney breaks off saying, "ow," and craning his neck up to glare at John. "What was that-"_ _

__"They'll want you. Look, they're willing to put up with you _forever._ They must really, really like you. But they. can. wait." Rodney's quiet for a while, and it's strange that John's already used to Rodney's new silences._ _

__Rodney says, "fine," and suddenly out of the complete silence, John can hear his heart beat._ _

__\--_ _

__Rodney steps out of John's room, wearing a pair of ill-fitting sweatpants and worn-out USAF t-shirt and Dr. Parrish, who's walking by at exactly the wrong moment, faints and takes a whole tray of cross-seeded Athosian plants with him. Rodney says, "um, hi," to a passing Marine and the whole busy corridor just stops._ _

__John says, "infirmary," and they start walking, like nothing's wrong or different or strange, as everyone they pass gapes at them, open-mouthed and shocked. John doesn't say anything, doesn't really feel the need to call anybody on the radio, everyone will know within minutes, anyway. In Atlantis, news travels like electricity through water._ _

__Elizabeth materializes out of a side corridor on the way to the infirmary, giving Rodney one of her _thank god you're not actually dead_ hugs. She doesn't let go for a very long time, clutching at Rodney's shoulders and repeating his name over and over. Rodney looks touched and scared and uncomfortable at the same time, until suddenly Carson appears out of the same corridor and pries Elizabeth off, dragging Rodney by his wrist the rest of the way down the main hall._ _

__By the time they've made it to the infirmary, they've developed an entourage at least thirty deep; people crowding around, talking to each other in low tones, occasionally reaching out and trying to touch Rodney. John gets shoved back, jostled into the rest of the pack huddled around the infirmary door, until Rodney looks back, panicked, and says, "John? Where is Colonel Sheppard?" and the crowd parts, pushing him forward._ _

__Elizabeth is pacing back and forth like a nervous cat while Carson takes blood and blood pressure, shines a flashlight in Rodney's eyes. John walks up to hear Rodney explaining, sees the look of shock and awe on Elizabeth's face at the word _ascended.__ _

__John says, "see? I wasn’t going crazy," at the same time Carson says, "picture of health," in a surprised, disbelieving tone. Rodney looks smug._ _

__Elizabeth seems to shake herself out a little bit before she smiles at John, a full-body smile that he hasn't seen for a long, long time. She says, "Dr. McKay, it's good to have you back."_ _

__Rodney looks up from where he's staring with wonder at a tiny bowl of jell-o. "It's good to be back," he says._ _

__\--_ _

__[Note: "John goes about his routine, basically. He does sweeps and sometimes he goes where it's not actually on his route and catches glimpses of Rodney, sometimes he hears bits of conversation, sometimes he hangs back in the shadows and watches."]_ _

__\--_ _

__Rodney winces at Katie Brown, who's weeping and hiccupping out words like "mourned" and "moved on" and "engaged." Rodney pats her on the shoulder and looks contrite and supportive and completely confused._ _

__Katie looks up at his face and starts crying again before giving him just about the most awkward hug John's ever seen and walking stiffly out of the lab, sniffling. Rodney looks shocked and stricken for a good ten seconds before he catches John's eye and starts laughing. He says, "she's getting married. To an _anthropologist._ Talk about settling."_ _

__John smiles, hooks an arm around Rodney's shoulders and says, "her loss."_ _

__\--_ _

__John has to keep himself from touching Rodney all the time, constantly verifying that he's real. Sometimes he finds himself pressing his fingers to the inside of Rodney's wrist in the spare moments they're alone, feeling for the fluttering pulse there._ _

__Rodney gets back to work, gets briefed on the status of everything and re-issued his old laptop. He's been re-integrated, pulled back into the fold, but John stalks him around the corridors of Atlantis anyway._ _

__\--_ _

__Zelenka yells, "you were dead! Dead! I cried, you bastard, I regret that now."_ _

__Rodney rolls his eyes, clutching his laptop close to his chest and sputtering, "you wiped the hard drive!" Zelenka huffs, puffing out his chest, his breath fogging up the glasses that have slipped down his nose._ _

__"I backed up _everything._ Everything goes to Colonel Sheppard, like you ask. You want your porn, you go ask him!" Zelenka looks around wildly, viciously pointing at John and exposing his hiding place. John puts his hands up, tries to say, "hey, leave me out of this," but before he gets it out, he sees Rodney and Zelenka both doubled over laughing, Rodney gasping and saying, "you, you, oh, your _face,_ " between fits of laughter._ _

__Zelenka sobers first, pushing his glasses back up his nose and saying, "I threw out nothing."_ _

__Rodney nods, says, "thank you."_ _

__Zelenka looks briefly shocked, but he smiles in a guarded way, saying, "it's good to have you back."_ _

__Rodney says, "now tell me everything you've been doing wrong," and they get back to work._ _

__\--_ _

__The sun creeps up over the horizon and John's still awake, staring up at the ceiling as the light turns from early morning red to late morning blue. Rodney tosses and turns beside him, murmuring strange Ancient words, breathing in and out. John lies in bed, just listening, as Rodney blinks himself into consciousness._ _

__The room stays still and silent as Rodney doesn't say anything and John doesn't say anything, until Rodney turns suddenly and says, "you really want fifty years?"_ _

__John shoves the happiness rising up from his stomach deep down inside and smothers the grin threatening to break free and says, "sure."_ _

__Rodney rolls over and sits up, staring down at John. He says, "you were more attractive when I was ascended." John tries to sit up, but Rodney's hand pushes him back down._ _

__John laughs at Rodney's little half-scowl, says, "well, now somebody's not getting their porn back," and thinks maybe fifty years still won't be enough time._ _


	3. Teen Wolf: Stiles/Derek -- watched the sun rise on my street

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The unfinished sequel to "i thought it make believe" -- set in that universe.

###  **05:46AM MST -- Monday, February 5, 2023**

Ms. Morrell was pretty much the only counselor that Stiles ever saw that didn't outright tell him he was bugnuts for the whole _werewolves_ thing.  In fact, what she’d said was, "I know a few colleges with good Classics programs," like that wasn't weird, unrelated, and _vague as shit._

When Stiles has started her down with all the blank confusion a non sequitur like that deserved, she'd added, "I'd be happy to write you a letter of recommendation."

_This_ is why Stiles is the only detective in the history of the Denver Police Department with a degree in Folklore and Mythology.

"Huh," Bleeker says.

"You asked."

"I thought it would be a better story."

Stiles suspects he's set the bar too high.

"That ever come in handy?" Bleeker asks, glancing up at him over the top of her breakfast sandwich, a smudge of hotsauce on the corner of her mouth.

"Yeah," Stiles says, " _All the fucking time._ "

Bleeker doesn't look like she believes him.

Her phone starts buzzing, shaking itself millimeters at a time across the cracked and peeling linoleum of the diner’s lunch counter.  On spec, Stiles pulls a wad of crumpled bills out of his pocket, drops a twenty next to his half-empty milkshake.

Bleeker cocks her head to the side, listening intently to something Stiles can’t hear.  She catches Stiles' eye and nods.

Time to go.

###  **04:55PM PDT -- Friday, June 23, 2017**

"What does that even mean, _by five?_ " Stiles asks. "Does that mean _at_ five or _before_ five?"

Dad looks from the clock above the microwave to Stiles and then back.  "I'm not a mind reader," he says, "But I think it means he'll be here by five."

Stiles walks over to the farthest edge of the kitchen, to where he can almost, almost see the front door.

"Maybe he got lost," he says. "He used to live here, sure, but that was like when he was _fifteen._ "

Dad gets a pinched, forced-patient expression on his face -- one Stiles recognizes from the less awful moments of his adolescence -- and he says, "I'm sure he has GPS."

"But-"

"For the love of God, Stiles, sit down," Dad snaps.  "You're driving me crazy."

Stiles sits down and scrolls through the messages on his phone, but there's nothing new.  He has one message from Derek, timestamped at 9:00AM: _be there by five. _"__

"Are you really sure about all this?" Dad asks.  "I mean, this all seems pretty sudden."

Stiles rubs his free hand over his face for about the thirtieth time.  "Yeah," he says.  He puts his phone down on the kitchen table and jams both hands into the pockets of his jeans to keep himself from fidgeting.  "Yeah I'm sure."

"This whole thing, it's a lot for me to take in," Dad says. "I mean, you didn't even tell me you and Danny were having problems."

"It wasn't, I mean, it wasn't really all that - it's not much of a surprise on my end," Stiles says.

"That was a long time ago," Dad says. There's a particularly resigned tone to his voice that Stiles remembers well.

"Stop.  Just stop, please," Stiles says.  They've had this conversation, he knows how it goes from here:   _We talked about this.  I thought you were doing better.  I thought we were past this._

He doesn't really know why he expected any different.

"I just want what's best for you."

Stiles takes in a deep, steadying breath.

The doorbell rings.

###  **06:22AM MST -- Monday, February 5, 2023**

"So the thing is," Stiles says, "I feel more like I'm on the Hale Family Board of Advisors than an equal partnership."

Bleeker looks at him sideways.

[they get to the crime scene]

"Jane Doe, caucasian, thirties or early forties.  She was spotted from up there," Officer Perkins points a the overpass looming high above patch of concrete they're standing on.

Bleeker nods and rubs her hands together, her breath looming in the air, whispy little puff balls in front of her face.  "Anybody else on the scene?" she asks.

Perkins shakes his head. "Just me," he says.  "I was in the neighborhood."

"So were we," Bleeker says.  "Aren't we lucky."

"That's one word for it," Stiles says.

Bleeker looks at her watch, asks, "How long before the cavalry arrives?"

Stiles checks central dispatch from his phone.  I-25 is backed up through the Tech Center -- a crash near Downing funnelling all of rush hour down to one lane.  It looks pretty shitty, even for a Monday.  Stiles says, "Half an hour, maybe.  Probably less."

Bleekers tips her head towards the body, says, "Give me fifteen minutes alone with her."

Stiles checks his watch again.

"You get ten."

Bleeker doesn't argue, just turns on her heel and heads over.  Stiles hits the _Go!_ button on the timer app on his phone.

Officer Perkins looks confused when Stiles looks back in his direction -- he's still fairly new, transferred in from Lakewood just before Christmas.

"I'm distracting," Stiles says.  "We have a deal."

"OK," Perkins says. "Sure."

"No, really," Stiles says.  "I know what you're thinking.  My presence is a _present_.  Bleeker, on the other hand-"

"I can still _hear_ you," Bleeker says, clearly, voice hardly even raised.  "I'm like, ten feet away."

Perkins half-smiles, most of his face struggling to appear serious and unamused.

"So," Stiles starts, but he doesn't really have anything to say.  It's amazing -- he is still, despite the sheer volume of cocktail parties and happy hours and fundraisers he's attended over the years, remarkably shitty at making smalltalk.

"So," Perkins says back, and luckily the radio velcro'd to Perkins' shoulder chooses that moment to hiss a garbled question at him. He wines briefly at Stiles before thumbing it on and walking away a few steps to answer.

Stiles' timer reads 9 minutes, 23 seconds.  Close enough.

"Time's up," he says, coming up behind Bleeker.  "Miss me?"

Bleeker looks up at him, unamused.  The way she's crouched over the body blocks his view almost entirely.   "Yes, Hale," she says, "Every second we're apart is like an eternity."

She stands up, rubbing her hands together again.  Her eyes are still gold around the edges, and while Stiles is watching she takes a few more deep, deliberate breaths in through her nose.

"Anything?" Stiles asks.

"Wolf," she says.  "No one I know personally, but it was a full moon last night."

"I'm shocked," Stiles says, and Bleeker laughs. She finally moves to the side enough that Stiles gets his first good look at the body.

Bleeker says something, but it's like Stiles can't hear her or can't understand English anymore.  He really thought he was all out of things that could surprise him, but -

" _Holy shit._ "

He was wrong.

###  **04:59PM PDT -- Friday June 23, 2017**

The first thing Stiles says when he opens the door and sees Derek on the front porch is, "You see him too, right?"

Dad winces, pinches the bridge of his nose, and says, " _Really_ , Stiles?"

"I'm gonna go ahead and take that as a _yes_."

Derek looks, God help them all, amused.  He's smiling, as far as Stiles can tell behind his big, mirrored sunglasses and deep five o'clock shadow.  He looks -- yeah.

"Mr. Hale," Dad says, "It's been a long time."

Dad unlatches the screen door, pulls it open, and shakes Derek's hand before he steps inside.

"Sheriff," Derek says, nodding, smiling.  He really doesn't seem real.  "It's good to see you again."

Beacon Hills was - is - will probably always be - a small town, but Stiles is still a little surprised.  He didn't know they knew each other.

Dad grins big and says, "I haven't been the Sheriff in quite a while.  But feel free to keep calling me that, it makes me feel important."

Derek walks further into the house, stops when he's close enough that Stiles can smell the almost-familiar scent of his aftershave.

"Hey," Stiles says.

"Hey," Derek says back, a small smile turning up the corners of his mouth.

"You look, uh, good," Stiles says. "You look great."   _You look real._

"Can I get you a drink?  You look like you could use one."

Derek shakes his head.

"You sure?" Dad asks.  "I know when I met Claudia's folks-"

"Derek's uh, not much of a drinker," Stiles says.  What little Stiles remembers from _that night_ , he can clearly remember Derek's untouched glass of wine, his steady hands and clear eyes.

"I'd give you the grand tour, but Stiles says you've got to get going soon," Dad says, "Here, let me help you with that."  He takes Derek's overnight bag, leading the way upstairs to Stiles' room.  Derek motions for Stiles to go first, and when Stiles doesn't move fast enough, guides him forward with a hand at the small of Stiles' back.

"Glad you found the place," Dad says, over his shoulder. "Stiles was starting to think you'd gotten lost."

"I didn't say that," Stiles lies. "I just didn't know if you'd know your way around anymore."

"Actually," Derek says, "I still know the area pretty well.  I've been back a few times."

"You have?"  Stiles didn't know _that_ either.

"I had unfinished business," Derek says, and an involuntary shiver goes up Stiles' spine.

"Well, here it is," Dad says, and he drops Derek's bag onto Stiles' old rolling desk chair.  "Not quite the Ritz, but there's beer downstairs if you need it."

"Thanks Dad."

"I'll just... leave you to it, then," Dad says, though he doesn't really leave so much as linger suspiciously in the doorway.

" _Thanks Dad_ ," Stiles says, again, and slowly shuts the door in his face.

"Sorry," Stiles says, turning back to Derek. "I'm so sorry about that.  Him.  I mean, I should have gotten a hotel room.  It was just that it was short notice and I already said I was going to stay here, so..."

Derek takes a couple steps forward, backing Stiles up until he's flat against door.   They're about the same height, all Stiles can see is the pale, brown-green of Derek's eyes.

"Hey," Stiles says, again.   _Smooth._

"Hey," Derek says, his lips curving into a smile halfway through the word.

"I missed you," Stiles says. "Why would I miss you?  That doesn't even make any sense."

"No," Derek says.  "It doesn't."

Derek moves in, close, close enough that Stiles can feel the damp heat of Derek's breath against the side of his face.

"We should get, uh, we should change if we're going to get there on time," Stiles says, voice a little strained.

"Sure," Derek says, and he backs off, totally casual, like he wasn't just _smelling Stiles' neck_ a second ago.

"Oh," Stiles says.  He didn't actually expect Derek to stop.

It's not that he's _disappointed_ \-- they, right, they need to be somewhere by five six.  Or was it six thirty?  Shit.  He wrote it down somewhere.

Stiles pulls a half-dozen pieces of paper out of his jeans pockets -- In 'N' Out receipt, chiropractor's business card,  coupon for a dollar off almond milk, and, bingo: post-it note that says _Rehearsal Dinner: 6:00 @ Mona's._

"Ok, the rehearsal dinner is at-" Stiles starts, looking up right as Derek pulls his shirt over his head.

Stiles' mouth goes dry.

"Yes?" Derek asks, "You were saying something?"

"Nope," Stiles says, shaking his head.  "I wasn't saying - it's not really that important, anyway."

"Good."

Derek takes a step forward again, right back into Stiles' personal space, and smiles in a predatory way when Stiles swallows audibly.He reaches past Stiles, turns the lock on the door, and says, "I missed you, too."

###  **06:45AM MST -- Monday, February 5, 2023**

It takes an embarassingly long time for Stiles to grok what he’s looking at, and when he does it takes him a _stupid long_ time to stop just blinking at it and actually process anything.

"Hale," Bleeker says, shaking his shoulder, not gently.  "Hey buddy."

Stiles spends a crazy, irrational second wondering, sincerely wondering, if he did this.  He can picture it _vividly_.  He’s thought about it, before; he’d be crazy not to have at least _thought_ about it, but-

"Detective Hale!" Bleeker snaps at him, "Stiles!  You are freaking me out right now!"

Stiles comes back online to the painful and familiar sensation of claw-tips digging into his skin and looks up into a wide, panicked expression on Bleeker's face.

"Sorry," Stiles says and Bleeker lets go.

"The photographer's here," she says, "He needs you to move."

Stiles looks around, there are people _everywhere_ \-- when the fuck did they get here?

"Sorry," Stiles says, again.  He lets Bleeker pull him out of the way, towards the side of a concrete shed.

"Are you going to throw up?" Bleeker asks.  "You never throw up.  Are you pregnant?"

"Sorry," Stiles says, like it's the only word he knows how to say anymore, until he replays the last thirty seconds in his head and squawks, "What -- no -- _I'm not pregnant_."

"That's comforting," Bleeker says.  She puts a hand on Stiles' forehead, looks Stiles deep in the eye like she's checking for concussion symptoms.

"What the fuck?" Stiles asks.  "Why would you when ask that? That's not even _possible_ , I mean, I'm _pretty_ sure that's not --"

"Whoa, slow down there cowboy," Bleeker says.  "That was a joke.  Unless-"

" _No._ "  Stiles shoves her hands away.

"Well, what is going on with you?" she asks. "You completely spaced out for like, five minutes."

Stiles looks past Bleeker at the dead woman lying on the ground, but she hasn't magically changed in the last minute into something that makes any more sense.  "I know her," Stiles says, "I mean, I knew her.  I mean, I know who she is."

Bleeker looks over at the body, then back up at Stiles.

"Are you sure?" she asks.

It’s a valid question.  There’s not a lot left of the victim's face that isn’t slashed through or covered in thick, congealing blood, but no, he’s sure.

He'd recognize Kate Argent anywhere.

###  **06:21PM PDT -- Friday, June 23, 2023**

Derek's car is electric and expensive in shiny, obvious ways that make Stiles feel awkward and displaced in the off-the-rack suit he bought at an outlet mall.

Stiles' head is a mess of random thoughts: _Should I turn on the radio?_  and _Jesus, how do you even turn on this radio?  Magic?_ and _Maybe I should think of something to say? Or we could just live the rest of their lives in awkward silence._  and _Christ, what the fuck should I be doing with hands?_

"So," he says.

"So," Derek says back.  He doesn't say anything else, just smiles wide at Stiles' obvious discomfort.

Oh, great, apparently the man Stiles married is _kind of a dick._

Stiles takes a breath to say something else, something like, _Wow, you're an asshole_ , when his phone chimes that it has a new text message.

Derek glances over, eyes flicking to Stiles' phone and then back to the road.

"Scott," Stiles says, shaking the phone a little in illustration.  It chimes three more times in quick succession and Derek looks over again.  "He's a little co-dependant."

Derek rests his right hand on Stiles' leg, says, "He's probably just worried about you."

OK.  Maybe Derek's not _that_ much of an asshole.

Scott: where r u?

Scott: Lydias freaking out

Scott: now Allisons freaking out

Scott: ???

Stiles: Sorry!  Running late!  We'll be there soon.

Scott: we?? r u bringing him? i wnat to meet him already ;D

Stiles: We're almost there!

Stiles mutes his phone, works it back into his pocket.  Neither of them say anything, still, but the silence in the car is less awful and forced than it was before.

"Sorry," Stiles says.  "Parking is always shitty on this side of town."

Derek nods, looking out the passenger side window as they pass the restaurant for the second time.  For a moment he looks surprised, and if Stiles knew him better, he'd probably say _terrified._  Stiles turns his head to see what Derek saw, notices a blond woman in a leather jacket smoking on the front patio, face mostly turned away from the road.

Derek turns the corner, pulls the car into a handicap spot.

"You OK?" Stiles asks.

"Yeah," Derek says, he shakes his head and smiles at Stiles in a way that seems wrong.  "Why wouldn't I be?"

"You looked-"

"I'm fine," he says, "I just thought I saw someone I knew."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm _fine,_ " Derek says again, voice steady.  "Go on.  Find your friends.  I'll meet you inside."

###  **07:33AM MST -- Monday, February 5, 2023**

Stiles spends the ride back to the station writing out a rough, initial list of possible suspects on the back of a Jack in the Box receipt he finds wedged in the door well of Bleeker's Honda.  He hands it off to her as soon as she puts the car in park.

She glances over it and laughs hard enough that she starts snorting.

"What?"

"Your name looks really weird all spelled out like that," she says, when she catches her breath. "You never told me Stiles was a nickname.  How do you say-"

"Nope, not going there," Stiles says, "Wow, you’re an asshole."

"What is this?" she asks, waving the list at Stiles.

"That," Stiles says, "Is a not very complete list of people who would have wanted to kill Kate Argent."

Bleeker's expression morphs from amused to angry in a heartbeat.  She grabs his pen out of his hand, slashes through half of the names on the list without blinking. "It wasn’t you, it wasn’t _Laura_. Jesus, Stiles, why is everyone in this list named Hale?"

"Because I forgot to add my father, gimme that," Stiles says and does grabby hands at Bleeker until she makes an unimpressed face and him and bats his hand down.

"I'm not adding your father to this stupid list," she says, and pops open the driver's side door with too much force.  Stiles pries himself out on the other side, turns to meet Bleeker's angry stare across the roof of the car.

"You’re doing a _fantastic_ job of not explaining anything. It's awesome. You should really keep that up."

Bleeker turns and stalks off through the garage, radiating annoyance with every stomp of her heels.  Stiles follows, trying to catch on to one of the random thoughts ricocheting around the inside of his brain.

"Wait," he says. "Vi-"

"What?" she asks, not turning or looking or stopping.

"You know how I don’t really talk about my in-laws?"

Bleeker makes a dismissive little _mm-hmm_ sound, badges herself through the inner door to the station without looking back at Stiles or holding it open behind her.

"Well," Stiles says, "that’s because Kate Argent murdered them all."

Bleeker hesitates at the entrance to Major Crimes, glances at Stiles and then again at the crumpled receipt still in her left hand.  "Oh," she says, "Jesus.  That's awful."

"Yeah."

She also says, "You're _really bad_ at sharing information."

"Yeah. So I've been told."

###  **06:32PM PDT -- Friday, June 23, 2017**

Lydia is strategically placed near the coat check.  To someone who didn't know her as well as Stiles does, she would appear casually bored, occupied with her phone, but Stiles can see the tension in her shoulders.  Her eyes immediately dart to Stiles when he walks into her periphery and she snaps the cover of her phone case shut with a loud click, eyes narrowing in Stiles' direction.

"Sorry, sorry, OK, we're here now, hi," Stiles says, all in a rush.

The closer Stiles gets, the more Lydia looks at him like he's something unpleasant that got stuck to her shoe.  When he's within striking distance, she grabs his arm and starts dragging him forcefully down a side hallway towards the back banquet room.  "Where have you been?" she asks.  "You're 30 minutes late."

"Yes, yes I am. I actually noticed that part, what with it the little hand being on the six and all."  Stiles pulls against her momentum, tries to yank his arm back, says, "Let go of me, hey, knock it off.  Derek-"

"Are you off your meds again?" she asks, clearly pissed off, voice gone a little bit screechy.

"No!  I am not off my meds!  I am not _on_ meds," Stiles says, because even though Derek is still outside paying the meter, Stiles has absolutely _no doubt_ that he'll have heard that part.  " _Thanks for bringing that up_ , Lydia, that's not awkward to explain at _all_.  Now would you wait a minute?  He's just-"

Lydia rolls her eyes, says, "We're already running super late, we don't have time for one of your psychotic breaks.  I am _not_ waiting around all day for your imaginary werewolf boyfriend."

"I've been called a lot of things," Derek says, his voice loud and unexpected in the quiet hallway. "But that's a new one."

Lydia looks past Stiles, gasps, and Stiles pulls his arm out of her newly lax grip.

"Normally," Derek says, "I just go by Derek.  It's a lot shorter."  Stiles feels Derek come up from behind, rest a proprietary hand on Stiles' hip.

Lydia's mouth snaps shut with an audible click and her face rearranged quickly into an unimpressed expression.

"This way," she says, turning neatly on her heel and pushing open the double doors to the banquet hall.

Some small, petty, and dramatic part of Stiles is hoping for an awed silence to envelop the room when he walks in with a super hot stranger on his arm, but what actually happens is that he walks into a loud and crowded room full of mostly people he doesn't know very well.  People don't notice.

Lydia turns to Derek, and recovered to her default setting of bossy and unreasonable, snaps at him, "You, sit down.  I need to borrow Stiles."

Stiles sputters, but Derek smiles politely and settles into a seat next to one of Scott's work friends.

"Don't give me that look," Lydia says, shoving a microphone into his face.  "Get on with it already, we don't have all night."

"What?  What am I supposed to do with this?"

" _Say something_ ," Lydia says, and Stiles takes the mic.

"Hey, hey, hello," he says, unheard over the indistinct rumble of conversation.  He taps the microphone a few times, dull pop-pops of reverb echoing from the P.A., and Derek winces.   _Ooops_.

Lydia looks at Stiles again like he's a complete moron, and she picks up a knife and taps it against the side of a half-empty champagne flute.  A few more people look up.

"Hi," Stiles says, again.  "I was just told I have to give a speech."

Lydia sighs at him, and taps her foot impatiently.  "What," Stiles stage-whispers at her, "This was your idea!"  She uncrosses her arms long enough to give him a rolling _get on with it_ kind of gesture with one hand.

"Scott, where's Scott at, Scott!"  Stiles turns in all directions, until he spots Scott and Allison sitting at a table near the back with Scott's mom and Allison's parents.

"Hi!" Scott says, and waves.  Melissa gives Stiles a little smile and raises a very full glass of red wine in his direction.

"Scott, my man, you're getting married tomorrow!" Stiles says, and a cheer goes up from half the assembled friends and family.

Melissa claps around her wine, small droplets splashing over the rim of the glass, and says loudly, " _It's about damn time!_ "

Stiles has to turn his face away from the mic to hide a semi-hysterical laugh in a cough, and when he gets his breath back, he says, "Well, when the two of you have been together for almost a decade, we're not really wondering if you crazy kids are gonna make it or not.  We're just happy you guys finally threw us all a party for putting up with you this long."

"Good God," Lydia says, and she elbows Stiles in the side, wrenches the microphone out of his hand.  "What Stiles _meant to say_ was: we're all so happy everyone could join us in celebrating the happy couple.  Now, please, enjoy your dinner."

Lydia switches off the microphone, turns the full force of her unamused glare on Stiles and says, exasperated, "You are terrible at this.  How are you _this bad at life?_ "

There is a deep-set, unconquerable part of Stiles's subconscious that is still trying to impress Lydia Martin -- that after _all these years_ still really wants her to like him -- but when Stiles looks up past Lydia's wrathful face, he notices -- Derek is looking at him, Derek is smiling, the corners of his eyes crinkling along etched laugh-lines, and for the first time Stiles could give a _fuck_ what Lydia thinks he's bad at.

###  **12:02PM MST -- Monday, February 5, 2023**

The ball of red twine on Stiles' desk is getting low.

Stiles opens up the folder of crime scene photos, dumps them out over the pressboard top of his workspace.  Most of them he tacks up on his cork board under the heading _JANE DOE (K. ARGENT)._

"What were you trying to do, huh?"

Kate Argent's open, sightless eyes don't give up any answers.

Stiles winds a red thread between the push-pin holding up her name, and another one pushed into a map, stuck into the little label for Coor's Field.

"What the fuck were you _doing_ here?"

Kate Argent wasn’t supposed to _be_ in Denver, she wasn’t even supposed to be in the _country._  Stiles had a kind of unofficial BOLO out on her and last he’d heard she was hunting selkies in Manitoba.

Stiles jabs a few more pins into the map.  One for an Alpha Stiles knows is running a small-time meth lab in the suburbs.  One for a semi-feral pack of were-coyotes out by Deer Creek Canyon that eats roadkill and mostly keeps to itself.  Three for the names on Stiles' family reunion suspect list: the house in Cherry Creek, the usually empty condo in HiLo, the Fox Run Rehabilitation center on the outskirts of Estes Park.

He winds little bits of yellow string out from the crime scene to each of the pins, a little center hub between spiky inconclusive spokes.  Stiles takes a step back when he's done to get a clear view of everything all at once, but nothing jumps out at him except that he should probably take another trip to the craft store soon.

The actual case file isn't much help, either.  Kate Argent's personal effects at time of death had consisted of an out-of-ammo sawn-off shotgun, a tube of Blistex, a battery-dead cell phone, and a hotel keycard. Her clothes had been nondescript, functional; she'd been wearing tight jeans tucked into black boots -- who the fuck wasn’t in Denver in February -- and a black coat.  It looked like the kind of outfit you'd wear to go fuck with supernatural creatures in the middle of the night.

Not that Stiles was an expert. The one time _he_ ever picked a fight with a werewolf in the middle of the night he'd been sporting Vans, cargo shorts, and a Captain America t-shirt.   _Mistakes were made._

Stiles rubs his hands over his face.  He's getting nowhere.

He picks up, puts down, picks back up his phone, thumb hovering over the unlock button.  He looks at it for a minute, undecided, before it starts ringing and he nearly drops it behind his desk.

"Hi, what, _hi,_ " he says, breathy and disorganized, having barely managed to answer the call before it hit voicemail.

"Hi, sorry," Derek says. "Is this a bad time?"

"No," Stiles says, "I mean yes."

Stiles turns away from his psychopath arts and crafts project, spots Bleeker making her way across the bullpen.

"Stiles," Derek says.  "That wasn't really an answer."

"Sure it was," Stiles says. "At first _I_ was going to call _you_ , but now I think it’s a bad idea.  It's complicated.  I’ll tell you when I get home."

Bleeker walks up, leans against the edge of Stiles' desk.  "Is that Derek?" she asks, and Stiles nods. "Tell him he owes me money."

Derek sighs.  Stiles can almost _hear_ his disapproving look.

"Ignore her," Stiles says. "And screw Oakland, seriously.  That game was ridiculous."

Stiles closes his eyes.  He can picture Derek's face clearly, scrunched up into a sort of pained and exasperated fondness.

Derek says, "Call me when you’re heading home."

"Sure thing." Stiles listens for a second to the sound of Derek breathing, keeping the phone to his ear until until he hears the disconnecting beep.

Bleeker stands up, traces her finger down the yellow line connecting LoDo and Englewood.  She says, "You've been busy."

"Everybody needs a hobby."

Bleeker looks over Stiles' work, shifts her weight from side to side, pulls her arms into a long stretch behind her back.

"You know that every time you do this, it makes you look crazy."

Stiles knows what people say.  He just doesn't really care.

"Ready to go, Agent Scully?" Stiles asks.

Bleeker rolls her eyes.

"Don't even think about it," she says, flipping the long black strands of her hair over her shoulder.  "Auburn looks shitty with my complexion."

###  **07:01PM PDT -- Friday, June 23, 2017**

"Nice speech."

"I think I did good for a half a second of prep time," Stiles says. "Tomorrow I'll do better."

Stiles has _note cards._  He's practiced his speech in front of the mirror twenty times and half a dozen times to his Dad after that.  He could do it in his sleep.   _I first met Scott in the summer of 1994 when we were both picked last for T-ball.  Our eyes met over a sack of wiffle balls, the birds started to sing, and we just knew.  Really, I like to think that I was Scott's first love._

"You gonna introduce me?" Scott asks, and Stiles snaps back to reality.

[Scott meets Derek! Hilarity ensues.]

###  **2:45PM MST -- Monday, February 5, 2023**

The Medical Examiner's office is a depressing beige box tucked next to a boring hallway of hospital administrative offices near Denver Health.   It depresses the shit out of Stiles that he's probably going to end up here, one day.

"You get a lot of big animals in LoDo?" Jeremy asks.  His head tilted to the side like that, he looks eerily like a cocker spaniel.

Stiles shakes his head, says, "Not unless you count the bros."

"Then I can’t explain it.  You see this?"  Jeremy picks at the shredded skin of Kate Argent’s jugular with a pair of tweezers  "This kind of tear pattern is normally indicative of claws -- basically if she'd been found in an open space I'd say was mauled to death by something."

"Could have been a mountain lion, maybe," Bleeker says.  "Like ten years ago a bear walked into a bar in Estes Park and no one noticed."

"That sounds like the set-up to a bad joke," Stiles says, because, _really._

Bleeker says, "Weirder things have happened," and Jeremy nods like it's a reasonable idea.

" _Really?_ " Stiles says, his voice a little pitchy with disbelief.  "Your working theory is that a mountain lion stumbled out of Sports Column at two A.M. with the rest of the drunks.  Really."

Bleeker shoots him a glare, mouths, _work with me here_.  Stiles puts his hands up in defeat.

"Any chance she could have been killed somewhere else and dumped off there?" Stiles asks, because, yeah -- Bleeker’s right.  Stiles is being an idiot.  The closer they get to plausible, the farther they get from _werewolves._  "It's Denver, we don't have to drive that far to find wildlife."

Jeremy picks up and looks over a clipboard for a minute.  "Not really," he says, "Black and whites got to her at five, core temperature at the scene was 87.3.  It was pretty cold last night, puts time of death around early morning, two or three maybe.  Unless they kept her warm before they dumped the body, the mountain lion was a Rockies fan."

"I’m liking the Sports Column theory more and more," Bleeker says.

###  **7:44PM PDT -- Friday, June 23, 2017**

"So," someone, probably one of Scott's million cousins, says, "Steve, right?  I think we met once at that reunion.  What have you been up to?"

"Not a whole lot, really," Stiles says. He has never before seen this person in his life. "I uh, moved to Denver after college, I seem to have gotten married last week.  Oh, I've been studying, hoping to make detective soon."

"Denver, huh," the cousin says, like _that's_ the most interesting thing Stiles mentioned.  "You like it out there?  Isn't it cold?"

"Sure," Stiles says. "Sometimes.  I'm sorry, would you excuse me?"

The cousin shrugs and turns her attention to a conversation happening further down the other side of the table.  Stiles stands up and heads for the bathroom.

"Stiles."

Stiles stops dead.  It was inevitable, but still, some part of him was hoping to avoid this part.

"Danny," Stiles says, and he takes a deep breath before turning around. "Hi.  You look, uh-"

Danny doesn't look happy.

"Were you cheating on me?" Danny asks, not quietly.

" _No_ ," Stiles says, dropping his voice to a hissed whisper.

Danny gives Stiles a look of utter disbelief.  "When did you see him?" He asks,  "Was it was when I was in class?  Is that why-"

" _No_ ," Stiles says again.  Most of the conversation at the closest table has dropped off completely, Stiles can see few people trying hard to look like they're not eavesdropping.  "I didn't cheat on you.   _Not ever_.  Look, can we talk about this, um, not _here_?"

"Fine," Danny says, not moving, and Stiles grabs his arm above the wrist and pulls, dragging him into a little alcove by the men's room.

"Tell me what the hell is going on, Stiles," Danny says and crosses his arms and oh that is not a good sign.  "Because all I know is what it _looks like_."

"What do you want me to say."

"Well to start, who the hell is he?" Danny asks, eyes darting back over his shoulder, where Derek is sitting.

"It's _Derek_ ," Stiles says.  "We -- found each other, after the bachelor party."

"A week ago?"  Danny asks.  "You've known him a _week_ and you're bringing him _here? _"  To your best friend's wedding?"__

"I haven't know him a _week_ \-- are you listening to me?  That's _Derek Hale_.  He's not just _some guy._ "

But Danny _doesn't_ look like he's listening, his whole attention is focused on Stiles' twitching, nervous hands.   "What the hell is that?" he asks and he grabs Stiles' left wrist, holds Stiles' hand up between them like it's evidence in a court case.   _Let me present exhibit A._

"Uh," Stiles says.  His wedding band catches the flickering light from the decorative candles, bright, shining and obvious between them.

Danny's voice is small, stunned, as he says, "I thought you didn't _want_ to get married."

Stiles doesn't think before he blurts out, "Not to you."

Danny looks _gutted._  He lets go of Stiles' wrist, turns to leave and nearly runs into Derek, who's coming the other way.

"Stiles," Derek says, looking past Danny like he's not even there.  "I was looking for you, is everything OK?"

"We're _fine_ ," Danny says, sounding anything but. "I was just going."

"Wait, Danny, no," Stiles says, "Let me explain."

"Derek, is it?" Danny asks.  He barely glances up at Derek's face. " _Good luck_."

The look Derek gives Danny isn't particularly welcoming, but Danny doesn't see it -- he's already shoving past Derek to get away.

Derek looks again at Stiles, says, "I could hear your heartbeat."  He was listening to that?  "You sounded upset."

"You didn't have to do that, you know," Stiles says.  "I know we've like, established a pattern here, but you don't _always_ have to save me from myself."

Derek half-smirks, says, "Why would I stop now?"

"I'm fine," Stiles says.  "Danny's just-"

"A moron."

"No, he's not, he's a good guy, I just-"  Stiles takes a deep breath.

Derek places fingertips gently on Stiles' face, tilts his chin up until Stiles is looking out, instead of down.  He says, "I'm not going to feel bad for Danny.  Ever."

"Well, that makes one of us," Stiles says.

###  **04:15PM MST -- Monday, February 5, 2023**

"IT called," Bleeker says.  "He wants us to come down."

Stiles takes out his phone while they're walking to the elevators and texts Derek: _I'm going to forensics._

He waits about a minute, sends: _ok now stop growling._

Bleeker unsubtley reads over his shoulder, and Stiles knows from long exposure that she's staring him like, _why are you such a dumbass._

"Every time," she says, as they walk into an open elevator cab.   _"Every time!"_

Stiles ignores her, punches the button for the sixth floor.

"It's complicated," Stiles says.

"It's been years."

"It's been long, complicated years."

"Why can't he just -- you work together!"

"Derek is -- you of all people should understand that sometimes he can get _territorial._  If I come home smelling like-"

"What do you mean _me of all people,_ I'm not _like that._  Just because we're both-"

"You really want to talk about this now?  Here?"

"I'm just saying, if he's going to be like that, maybe he should just pee on you and get it over with."

The elevator doors ding open onto the surprised and amused faces of a few lab techs Stiles knows and Stiles can feel his face heating up with second-hand embarrassment.  

"Uh, excuse us," Stiles mutters, and bravely shoulders past into the hallway, avoiding eye contact with Bleeker on the way.

Stiles comes to a stop in front of a door labeled in large bold letters _Toolmark Unit_ , with a sticky note stuck over the "U" reading _Computer Forensics._  "After you," he says, and Bleeker rolls her eyes before opening it.

Danny doesn't look up from his computer, holds up the keycard before Stiles has a chance to ask.  He says, "It’s the Ramada on Colfax.  She checked in as Betty Jordan."

"Oh that’s cute," Stiles says.

Danny and Bleeker both turn to him, matching blank expressions on their faces.

"Betty Jordan," Stiles says, again, slowly, "Like Bête du Gévaudan.  You know, the man-eating wolf creatures that terrorized eighteenth century France."

Bleeker blinks at him, slowly, and Danny shakes his head.

"Folklore and Mythology degree," Stiles says.  "I can play this game _all. day. long_."

"What did you get from the phone?" Bleeker asks, taking the card from Danny and visibly shifting her attention away from Stiles.

"Pay as you go, activated about four days ago," Danny says, "Her only calls were to a couple cell phones with 530 area codes.  I can ping you with the numbers."

"Beacon Hills," Stiles says.  "We can check them against what we have for the family."

"Makes sense," Danny says, "The phone GPS puts her last known location in northern California."

"Anything in the browser history?" Stiles asks.

"Nothing useful," Danny says.  He prods at a tablet on the table and spins it around so that Stiles can scan over the URLs: Denver weather, directions to the convention center, yelp reviews of downtown bars, a website selling Frye boots on clearance.  Nothing obvious, nothing particularly interesting.

"Well, thanks anyway," Bleeker says and she turns to leave.

"Oh hey, Bleeks, wait.  I missed you at the Christmas party," Danny says, rummaging around in a drawer.

Danny finds what he's looking for - a small stack of 2"x3" photographs - and he hands one to Bleeker, beaming.  It's been years, honestly, _years_ , but Stiles is still not immune to Danny's wide, brilliant smile.

"What," Bleeker says, "What is this?  Lilo can't be in school yet, wasn't she, like, two years old last week?"

Danny's smile gets bigger, showing off his gleaming, white teeth.  "She started kindergarten in the fall."

"Tell her to stop growing up," Bleekers says, grinning and shaking her head.  "She's making me feel old."

###  **7:52PM PDT -- Friday, June 23, 2017**

[... introduce Victoria]

[I have a note here that says "something about children.  they're the future, you  know." No idea.]

###  **06:32AM MST -- Tuesday, February 6, 2023**

Stiles hates hotel hallways; there's something that just bugs him about the light, the smell, the ugly, ornately patterned carpet.

They get to Bleeker, too, he thinks.  It takes her four tries to get the key card reader to work, by the third try she's growling in a low, semi-audible way that makes the hairs on the back of Stiles' neck stand up.

Inside, everything is pretty much exactly what Stiles pictured: map of the city spread out over the desk, black leather duffle bag shoved under the bed, newspaper clippings and print-outs from Yahoo!news taped to the mirror over the dresser.

"Girl liked shoes," Bleeker says from the entryway, poking her head into the hall closet.

Stiles brushes past Bleeker, crouches down and pulls out the duffle bag, carefully drops it on top of the comforter.  It’s heavy, like he knew it would be, and when he pulls down the zipper, it’s contents are pretty much exactly what he’s expecting there too.

"She also was fond of semi-automatics," he says.

Bleeker clusters in close, ducking in under Stiles' arm to get a better view.  Over her shoulder, Stiles recognizes a carved wooden box, reaches past her to lift it up and away, out of the range of her curiosity.   "Don’t touch that," he says, and puts it down on the nightstand.

Bleeker rolls her eyes.  She pulls out the rest of the guns, one at a time; Stiles can see her mouth moving as she counts them all to herself.  "Well," she says, looking them over, "Whatever she came here to do, she was well prepared."

"Obviously not," Stiles says.  He's about to add, _or she wouldn't be dead_ , when something catches his eye.

The newspaper clippings taped to the mirror are, for the most part, the same kinds of clippings that Stiles keeps in a locked drawer in his desk: animal attacks, weird weather patterns, the kind of normal abnormal happenings that people like Stiles, like the Argents, tend to keep track of.  But in the center of the familiar nest of copperplate and sans serif is the bland, incongruous headline _Tech Magnate to Donate Millions to Denver Public Schools_ and a picture of Derek.

_Fuck._

###  **7:44PM PDT -- Friday, June 23, 2017**

[They get introduced officially to Kate, who is in the wedding party.]

Kate says, "Oh, sure, Derek and I are old friends.  We go _way back._ "  She makes Stiles' skin crawl.

###  **08:02AM MST -- Tuesday, February 6, 2023**

Derek’s not officially a suspect, not _really,_ because as far as most people know Derek can’t rip someone’s throat out with his teeth.

Stiles pauses, thumb over the call button on his phone, and says, "What if-"

Bleeker breaks hard at the stoplight on Broadway, and Stiles jerks forward, the seat belt slamming up against his already tight chest.  

_"If,"_ she says, and Stiles can see her hands flex too-tight against the steering wheel.  "Then it was _self defense_.  Okay?"

Bleeker looks over at Stiles, ignoring the honking cars behind her as the light changes.

" _Okay?_ " she asks, again.

"It’s a green light," Stiles says, and Bleeker floors it.

Stiles hits the call button on his phone.

"Hey," Stiles says when Derek picks up, "I need to ask you something."

Stiles knows, on some level, that he can rule Derek out as a suspect, or at least he knows he has ways to check it out for himself.  They have a security system that can tell him if anyone left their house on Sunday night.  Derek has a next-gen-next-gen phone with all kinds of build-in location tracking.  Stiles doesn’t _have_ to ask, except for how he really, really does.

"Kate Argent was found dead last night.  In Denver.  Did she..." he trails off again, can't get the words out,  He's not sure what he's even trying to ask.   _Did she talk to you?  Did she threaten you?  Did she try to hurt you?_

There's a long, not as long as it _feels_ , silence on Derek's end of the conversation.

"She had," Stiles says, and he has to stop and take a breath, and then another, forcing the air in past the tightness in his lungs.  He tries again, says,  "She had pictures of you in her hotel room."

He might throw up.  It’s a pretty good possibility.  Because it's really not out of the realm of plausibility that _something_ happened, that Derek just hasn't _told_ Stiles.  Derek's always trying to _protect_ him, even if it's stupid, even if it always makes things _worse._

"No," Derek says, voice solid, definitive. It gets softer, more uncertain, as he adds, "She didn't -- I didn't know that."

"Oh," Stiles feels a little light headed. "Ok.  That’s… yeah."

Bleeker takes the turn onto 13th too fast, but her death grip on the steering wheel has eased up, a little.

Derek asks, "How did it happen?"

"How do you _think,_ " Stiles says, "I’m pretty sure she was voted _Most Likely to be Mauled to Death by a Werewolf_ in her high school yearbook.  If that was a category, which, I’m gonna be honest, in some school districts it really should be.  Like Beacon Hills."

Bleeker snorts and mutters, "And Boulder Valley."

[Bleeker and Stiles visit Uncle Peter in "Arkham" (aka Fox Run Rehabilitation) and Peter hits on Bleeker.  Because Peter.  Featuring the line -- "darn, I meant to do that" re: killing Kate.]

###  **08:06PM PDT -- Friday, June 23, 2017**

[Stiles puts everything together.  "The Argents lit the fire."]

###  **04:43PM MST -- Tuesday, February 6, 2023**

For obvious reasons, their anniversaries are close together.

"We were both going to go, but we couldn't get a babysitter on short notice so I just told Allison she could go without me," Scott says and Stiles can hear the faint wailing sound of Caleb crying in the background.

Stiles says, "I thought that's what grandparents were for."

"Oh sure," Scott says, and the wailing sound starts to get louder.  He must be walking into the nursery.  "But her Mom's been out of town all week at that conference."

They'd called Chris Argent first thing yesterday morning to inform him of the death in the family and ask him gentle, non-probing questions.  Stiles himself hadn't been on the call, because Stiles has a bad habit of screaming at Chris Argent in public, but he has a copy of Bleeker's notes somewhere.  He shuffles a couple other manilla folders aside until he spots Bleeker's scrawling handwriting.  

Scott says, "I still have Derek's belt that he lent me at the wedding and I was thinking I should give it to her to give to you, but by the time I mentioned it to Allison she'd already left."

Stiles gets lost sometimes in Scott's sentences.  "Allison had left?"

"No, I mean, Allison's mom.  She left on Sunday."

Bleeker's notes say: _C.A. asking about timeframe re: body.  Wife leaving monday AM for conference in Denver - can wife escort body to Cal (Talk to Jeremy.)_

"I know what happened," Stiles says, about twenty alarm bells going off in his head at once.

###  **8:21PM PDT -- Friday, June 23, 2017**

[Kate like seriously pulls out a crossbow and tries to shoot Derek with it, because Kate.]

[Stiles jumps in front of Derek, but Allison gets Kate in the neck with a tazer first, because Allison.]

Lydia screams.

Stiles doesn't know Allison's dad at all, really.  The last memory Stiles has of the man is shaking his hand after high school graduation.

[Chris Argent reaches down to help Derek to his feet and Stiles freaks out.]

"You stay the fuck away from him," Stiles yells.  "Stay the fuck away from my family!"

Chris Argent puts his hands up, placating, but Stiles is just _not having it_ today.  [Allison uses some motherfucking zip-ties she has in her purse to bind Kate's hands behind her back and Stiles hauls Chris Argent outside.]

"I love Scott like a brother.  That is the _only_ reason I'm not going to prosecute your batshit crazy sister to the fullest extent of the god-damn law, do you hear me?"

"I hear you," Chris says.  "All I care about is Allison."

"We get through this wedding and then we never see each other again.  OK?  We stay away from you, you stay away from us, Scott and Allison are neutral territory.  What do you say, do we have a deal?"

Chris nods, extends his hand for Stiles to shake.

###  **07:59AM MST -- Wednesday, February 7, 2023**

The convention center is huge and modern, strange made stranger by the four-story blue bear peering in the bank of windows on one side.  Stiles flashes his badge at a security guard and wades into the wall to wall crush of women in skirt suits and sensible heels.

Whatever he's done in the past, God must _love him now_ because on the poster-board with room assignments is a placard for a seminar titled _Where Failure is NOT an Option_ letting out in 5 minutes.  Stiles nods at Bleeker and then takes off at a fast clip towards the Mile High Ballroom.

He spots a woman with short, bright red hair lingering near the doorway, talking to a balding man in a ill-fitting gray suit.

"Victoria," Stiles calls out as soon as he's within more-or-less reasonable distance. "Victoria, is that you?"

Victoria turns and stills.

"Gosh," Stiles says, slowing from a jog to a walk, "I haven't seen you in for _ever_.  How long has it been?"

By the time Stiles is within an arm's length, Victoria has a convincing fake smile fixed into place. " _Stiles_ ," she says through gritted teeth.  "It's lovely to see you."

She doesn't really let Stiles out of her sight as she turns to says something to the man next to her; some thin and implausible lie about Stiles being an old, dear friend.  The man nods and smiles and holds out his hand to Stiles, and Bleeker comes around the corner.  Victoria's head snaps up, her eyes lock with Bleeker's, Stiles can see them flash yellow and _holy shit_ , Victoria Argent really is a werewolf.

Stiles feels like the floor's been knocked out from under his feet.

"We had a _deal,_ " he says.

"Mrs. Argent," Bleeker says, calm, authoritative, the polar opposite to Stiles' _freaking the fuck out._  "Why don't we go somewhere to talk?"

###  **09:04PM PDT -- Friday, June 23, 2017**

"Sorry I ruined your rehearsal dinner," Stiles says.

Scott punches him in the shoulder.  "You should be," he says, "That cost like a thousand bucks."

"I'll pay you back," Stiles says.  "Or, wait, I think Derek maybe bought the restaurant."

Scott laughs, says, "He seems like a good guy."

"Yeah," Stiles says.  "He is.  I'm into it."

"Is he, I mean, he's really a werewolf?"

"Yep."

"I'm sorry," Scott says.  "But, like, you can't hold Allison's family against her, man.  She didn't even know."

"No, I know that.  I just... I have this one good thing in my life, right?  And it keeps fucking everything over," Stiles says.  "I rescue a damsel in distress, meet the love of my life, and then everybody thinks I'm crazy for it.  I get married to the man of my dreams - literally, I'm going with literally here - and surprise!  One of your bridesmaids tries to shoot him with a fucking crossbow.  I can't _win_."

"I always believed you, you know that."

"Yeah.  You did.  Thanks, man."

"You weren't exaggerating the hotness."

"I know, right?  Holy shit."

"We're still cool, right?  Even if you did move to _Colorado_."

"BFFs for-evah," Stiles says.  "You still got that friendship bracelet I made you at One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest summer camp?"

Scott pushes up the sleeve of his shirt, Stiles catches a glimpse of ratty pink-and-yellow string barely clinging to life around his wrist.

"You're still coming to the wedding, right?"

"I wouldn't miss it for the world."

"You know what's weird,"  Scott says.  "I always thought I'd get married first."

###  **08:33AM MST -- Wednesday, February 7, 2023**

"I thought we had a deal," Stiles says.  "I distinctly remember us having a _deal._ "

If Stiles had to pick a word to describe Victoria Argent, he suspects he'd choose _brittle_.  But that's unfair, brittle implies _breakable._

"Am I under arrest?" Victoria asks.

"No," Bleeker says.  She doesn't volunteer more information.

"We get animal attacks around here sometimes," Stiles says.  He doesn't think he's being particularly subtle.  "Bears eating out of trashcans, deer in the parking lot, that kind of thing."

Bleeker nods.  "Coyotes," she says.  "They eat small dogs all the time."

It's not like Stiles had a wedding, not one he can remember, though there are pictures.  But he's been to enough of other people's weddings that there's always some part of it where someone says that relationships are about _compromise.  Yes dear, you're right, I'm sorry._

No one really mentions the part where relationships sometimes involve conspiring to cover up werewolf-related murders.

Victoria moves like she's going to stand.  "Then I'm free to go."

Bleeker reaches out, quick, and wraps her fingers tightly around Victoria's wrist; Stiles can see the bones straining against each other.

"Kate found out," Stiles says.  "About you.  How did that happen?"

Victoria stares down at Stiles with a lingering, pitying look.

"I tried to talk her out of it," Victoria says.  "She was being unreasonable.  She was always unreasonable."

"Talk her out of-"

"Finishing what she started."

"What, have a change of heart?" Bleeker asks.  "Should I start inviting you to the picnics?"

"Don't you _dare_ ," Victoria hisses, leaning forward, her eyes wide and crazed.  This is how she must have looked -- backed into a corner, shotgun pointed at her heart -- like a wild, trapped, desperate animal.  "What you are -- you're an _abomination_. And you're _proud_ of it.  You should be ashamed.  Don't you dare think we have _anything_ in common."

Bleeker's grip tightens on Victoria's wrist, fingernails digging in hard enough to break this skin.

"No," Bleeker says, and she lets go.  "We don't.  Detective Hale?"

Stiles stands, drops a hundred dollar bill on the twelve dollar tab.  "I think we have what we need."

"Are you going to tell Allison?" Victoria asks.  For a second, she sounds scared, vulnerable -- human.

"It's not my place," Stiles says, and Victoria breathes a sigh of relief.

"But all these lies, all these secrets," Stiles says,  "They're _poison_.  They will come back on you.  Allison deserves better than you, but you're all she has.  We've all lost enough family."

###  **09:32PM PDT -- Friday, June 23, 2017**

The space behind the restaurant is quiet, dark except for pockets of arc light from high up on the electrical poles string through the alleyway.  The sound of the door opening, closing, is loud, but not unexpected.

"Found me, huh."

"I followed your heartbeat," Derek says.

"You OK?"

"Am _I_ OK?  I'm a werewolf, Stiles," Derek says.  "I'm used to this kind of thing.  Are _you_ OK?"

"I'm a _cop_.   _I'm_ used to this kind of thing.  But not, you know, the kind of thing where people point medieval weaponry at my husband.  That's new."

Derek comes up closer and Stiles puts his hand over Derek's heart to feel the heartbeat there.  He can't just cheat and hear it like Derek can.

Derek says, "I bought a house in Denver."

Stiles looks at Derek out of the corner of his eye, but Derek looks dead serious.

"Why would you do that?"  Stiles asks.  "Who does that."

"You live in Denver, I want to be where you are,"  Derek says.  Just like that, like it's that easy.

"That's like, that's -- you're crazier than me," Stiles says.  "You're going to move to Denver? For me? You don't know me. You really don't know anything about me."

"You stood between me and a woman with a crossbow.  I think you're a fairly safe bet."

"That's not what I meant.  My mom, she had..."  Stiles leans his head back against the door -- thick, flaking paint over steel.  He says, "When I started talking about seeing werewolves in the woods, there were a lot of good, legitimate reasons for people to, well, for them to think I was hallucinating.  So they did."

"What Lydia was talking about before, I, uh,"  Stiles looks up at the sky, so he doesn't have to look at Derek's face.  "I was in an institution for a little while there.  So, now you know.  I wasn't trying to hide it or anything, but it's hard to just up and _tell_ people.  Feel free to, uh, if you wanted to file for divorce-"

Derek says, "You don't know me, either."

"Well, besides being rich and handsome, I'm pretty sure you've never had to get up close and personal with the five-point restraints system."

"The first person I ever loved died because of me.  You know what happened to my family.  I almost lost Laura."  Derek cuts himself off.  He says, "You still want in on this?  Because tonight, what happened, that could just be the beginning.  Eventually, everyone I love gets put in danger.  That's what being a Hale _means_."

"Oh," Stiles says, "That sounds -- well.  That sounds fucking awful."

"It is what it is," Derek says.

"So, I'm crazy and you're dangerous," Stiles says. "What a great combo.  Together, we're the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of shitty things."

"If you still want to be with me, I won't lie to you about how dangerous it is," Derek says.  "This is my life.  I can't sugarcoat it.  I won't lie to you about what -- about _who_ I am."

"That's funny," Stiles says, "Because you'd be the first person in my life I didn't _have_ to lie to."  Funny, for some definition of funny that means _horribly sad._

"I like you," Derek says.  "I like being around you.  You're not really like other people."

Stiles thinks, _tell me something I don't know._  He asks, "Is that a good thing?"

Derek says, "We can find out."

Stiles thinks about it, for a little while.  He says, "Tell me about the house."

###  **06:55PM MST -- Wednesday, February 7, 2023**

"Long day," Stiles says.

"You want to talk about it?" Derek asks, hands Stiles a glass of wine.

"Not really."

[...]

"Hey," Stiles says.  "Do you remember the first thing you ever said to me?  The night we met?"

"No.  Wasn't it _watch out_ or something?"

"Oh, yeah, sure," Stiles doesn't really remember that part either, he was too busy running for his life from a fucking _werewolf._  "I meant the other time."

Derek looks thoughtful, says, "I'm fairly sure I said, _did you know you're saying that out loud._ "

Great, Stiles doesn't really remember that part _either._  "Really?  That worked?"

"You were pretty drunk."

"And yet you married me anyway," Stiles says.  "Regret that one yet?"

Derek smiles.  He says, "Sometimes."

###  **07:55PM MST -- Monday, June 26, 2017**

"Closing out?" the bartender asks.  Stiles nods.  "Name?"

"Stilinski," Stiles says.

The bartender flips to the S section of his rolodex, says, "I'm not seeing it."

"Oh," Stiles says.  "I meant, uh, Hale.  It should be under Hale.  Because that, uh, that's my name."

The woman next to him at the bar turns a little on her stool, looks at him with an amused expression.  "You don't know your own name?" she asks.

Stiles turns to get a good look at her.  He doesn't recognize her all the way, but he thinks he's seen her around the department.  Narcotics?

"Long story," Stiles says.

"You wanna talk about it?" the woman asks.

"Not really," Stiles says, and reaches for his drink with his left hand.  The woman's gaze slides off off his wedding ring and back to his face, unsurprised and uninterested.  Not hitting on him, then.

"Mind if I do?" she asks.

"Go for it," Stiles says. One of Danny's friends in college used to call Stiles _Weirdo Jesus_ , because any time they went out to a bar, some crazy wino would always try to tell Stiles their life story.

"So, I got called in on this drug bust in Englewood," the woman (definitely narcotics) says, gesturing  widely with her right hand, nearly knocking over a bowl of pretzels. "We got word the perp was still in the house, right, but when we busted in the front, there's no one there but this massive dog that frickin' _bites me_ and runs off.  I had to get a _rabies shot._  Can you believe it?"

"What kind of dog was it?" Stiles asks.  Already, he has a bad feeling about this.

"It was like a husky or a malamute or something, I don't know.  It looked like a wolf."  She reaches down to her ankle, lifts up the hem of her pant leg, says, "It took a _chunk_ out of my leg.  See?"

"I don't see anything," Stiles says.  Her skin is a light tan, smooth -- not a trace of a cut, scrape or scar.

"What?" she asks, craning sideways to see her own calf, "It was a mess this morning."

"What was your name, again?"  Stiles asks.

"Vilayvanh," she says, offhand, distracted, still staring at her leg.   She looks up at Stiles and shakes her head, adds, "I mean, Bleeker.  Just call me Bleeker.  Three Es, one K, no C."

"Bleeker," Stiles says, "I changed my mind.  Can I buy you a drink?"

Bleeker looks confused, but says, "Sure, why not."

"Great," Stiles says, signalling to the bartender for another round.

"Right, so," Stiles says, "This may seem a little weird, but bear with me, it's important."

Bleeker looks, if possible, more confused.  "Oh-kay," she says, slowly.  "In that case, make it a double."

The bartender comes back, pours Bleeker two fingers of pretty nice Scotch.  Stiles hands back over his credit card, _G Stiles Hale_ , the one with the joint bank account and unlimited line of credit.  He says, "Just leave the bottle."

Bleeker's eyes bug out of her head.

"Trust me," Stiles says.   "You'll need it."

Stiles texts Derek: _how does Laura feel about adopting?_

"Now," Stiles says, raising his own glass, "Let me you about the night I met my husband."


End file.
